The Good Heart

Choosing To Heal

2012-02-12T22:28:00.000-08:00

The Gospel reading for this Sunday's liturgy, what we used to call Sexigesima Sunday, 60 days before Easter, is Luke 1:40-45.

"And a man with a scale-disease came up to him and saying, 'If you choose, you are able to cleanse me.' And he, becoming incensed, stretched out his hand and touched him and said, 'I do choose; be cleansed.' And immediately the scale-disease left him, and he was cleansed. And Jesus, snorting with indignation, immediately cast him out and said to him, 'See that you say don't say anything to anyone, but go and show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.' But he went out and began to proclaim it all over and to spread the news abroad, so that Jesus was no longer able to go into a city openly, but had to remain out in deserted places. And the people came to him from everywhere."

Where does one go with a text like this? Let me say right up front that I'm using the translation of Joel Marcus in his Anchor Bible commentary on Mark. The reason: seems that over the centuries various commentators have "softened" up some of the meaning of several key words which describe Jesus' state of mind. Instead of "moved with compassion" in v. 41, Jesus was actually expressing some anger, though not at the man, certainly. And in v. 43 "sternly" doesn't capture the classical Greek sense of snorting like a horse, or letting go an explosive breath, or growling. This is more than pickiness over small details. The differences in the accuracy of the words really affect the message here.

There are a lot of dynamics to the story which, in our culture, tend to be missed. First of all, this isn't a story about Jesus curing someone with Hansen's Disease, which we call leprosy. The term "scale-disease" covers a range of afflictions of the skin which were prevalent in Jesus' time. In either case, however, these were afflictions considered to threaten the cultic purity of the community, and thus there were strict Jewish laws about what such folks could do or where they could be. In effect, such people were "corpses". If you touched one of them, you were judged defiled. The afflicted had to run about in ragged clothing and with disheveled hair, and cry "Unclean!" if anyone approached. They were banished to live alone, outside the community.

So, this man, in approaching Jesus' venue and asking for healing, was where he should not have been and was at risk of defiling people around him. Jesus, too, did the unusual, actually the forbidden, by reaching out and touching the man while cleansing him. Undoubtedly, Jesus was quite aware of exactly what he was doing, and in a nod to Jewish law, he very emphatically sends the man straight to the priest in order to make the offering required by Mosaic Law for having been cleansed.

But in a remarkable reversal of situations at the conclusion of the story, the healed man goes out onto Jesus' "turf", among the people, and begins to tell anyone who'll listen about his miraculous cure. Meanwhile, because of this and because of all the publicity it engenders, Jesus is essentially consigned to "deserted places", and to have people come to him. And they do, says Mark, "from everywhere".

A few observations: the man with the skin disease obviously has heard of Jesus and his healing power. He appears to have and to express faith. Now what about the anger thing with Jesus? As I said, it's not directed at the man, unless you want to see it as Jesus being bothered because he felt the man presumptuous, or because it was an inconvenient time. I seriously doubt that! I believe that Jesus, at that moment when this outcast of society comes to him, becomes so consumed by his loathing of all the elements of evil -- cultural, societal, the religious establishment, prejudice, etc., which have conspired to demean this human being, that he reacts, simply reacts, out of his deep sense of righteousness and compassion. "I do choose, deliberately and decisively, to cleanse you into freedom from all that oppresses you." Further, I can imagine Jesus still grinding his teeth and growling as he sends the man off to the religious authorities who've made not only the man's, but Jesus' life also, so miserable. Nevertheless, and knowing that the Law with all its observances is only temporary and will be superseded soon in his dying and rising, Jesus humbly submits even to this.

This passage makes me think of two very immediate situations. The first is that just yesterday my son came out of a two-week stay in the hospital...again! I've lost track of how many times this has happened since his illness began almost 12 years ago. It makes me want to snort like a horse each time it happens! He gets so tired of it, and I know that I do. Yet, over and over, like the man who was cleansed, I have to keep saying to Jesus: "If you choose, you are able to heal Andrew." In ways that I don't understand and may never know in this lifetime, I know that Jesus does choose to bring healing.

The other example is occasioned by the tragic premature death this weekend of Whitney Houston. Again, I can't count the times even in my lifetime that this sad scenario has played itself out with other celebrities. It enrages me, it makes me growl, to see beautiful, talented, good young people end up throwing their lives away, whatever the reason, though many of the very same societal institutions, as in Jesus' time, bear some responsibility in all this.

When all is said and done, I'm convinced that Jesus does choose to deal with the enormity of all our human misery. Perhaps his expectation of me is to rise above my own anger and disgruntlement, and to choose to do what I can to not be the occasion for anyone else's misfortune, suffering, oppression, or downfall. Somehow, I don't think Jesus will hold it against me if, in doing this, I go out and proclaim this message all over and spread the news abroad!

St. Haralampos (Charalampos), c. 89-202 - Healer & Hieromartyr

2012-02-10T10:44:00.000-08:00

Today is the closest thing to a namesday for me that I've ever been able to figure out. A friend of mine, of Greek descent, told me some years ago that Haralampos/Charalampos, with many variations, is "Harry" in Greek. Close enough!

Haralampos apparently was a hearty soul, since he's said to have lived to age 113, then was martyred by Roman soldiers. My first reaction to that is why didn't they just let the old guy go at that age! Just put him a prison and forget about him. Apparently, though, his refusal to sacrifice to idols and his eloquent confession of his faith was more than they could handle, thus the overkill. He is said to have been mercilessly tortured and then beheaded. Military brutality indeed!

Many miracles are said to have been worked through prayer and the intercession by St. Haralampos, among them the raising up of a dead young person, and the healing of a man tormented by demons for 35 years.

The story about the latter says that when Haralampos was being tortured, the persecuting emperor, Septimius Severus, learned about his miracle-working power and ordered an insane man to be brought to Haralampos so that the emperor could be convinced that Haralampos could, indeed, heal him. The devil is said to have tormented this man for 35 years, driving him into the wilderness and hill country, and hurling him into mud or into gorges. When the deranged man finally approached Haralampos, the demon sensed a sweet-smelling fragrance emanating from the holy man and shouted: "I beg you, servant of God, do not torment me before my time, but rather command me and I will depart. If you wish, I will tell you how it came about that I entered into this man." St. Haralampos commanded the demon to tell the story. "This man wanted to steal from his neighbor," said the devil, "and thought to himself: 'If I don't kill the man first, I'll not be able to seize his goods.' So he killed his neighbor. Catching him in the act of doing so, I entered him and behold for thirty-five years I have dwelt in him." Hearing this, St. Haralampos commanded the demon to depart from the man immediately and to leave him in peace. The demon did so, and the demented man was restored to health and became tranquil.

The emperor apparently either wasn't convinced or deemed it of little importance, because Haralampos still paid the price.

Fr. Robert Llewllyn (1909-2008)

2012-02-06T13:28:00.000-08:00

Today the Order of Julian of Norwich commemorates the 4th anniversary of the death of Fr. Robert Llewelyn, who died on February 6, 2008, at age 98. His godly life in the Church of England and his expertise as a notable teacher of prayer endeared him to many others acrosss the world.

In his service as chaplain of the cell of Dame Julian in the town of Norwich, Fr. Robert made known to countless people the life and writings of this English mystic who lived in the small cell attached to a church at the turn of the 14th-15th centuries. He compiled a book of 200 of Dame Julian’s sayings, and it sold more than 100,000 copies. It was the first in a series of small devotional books authored by Fr. Robert. In 1994 he was awarded the Templeton Prize for his contribution to the advancement of religion in the field of spirituality.

Born Robert Charles Llewelyn at Exmouth, Devon, on July 6 1909, Robert’s great-grandmother, who lived on the Isle of Wight, was a friend of Queen Victoria. He was raised in a devout Anglican home, and first attended Pangbourne College, hoping to enter the Navy. Deciding that this didn’t suit him, Robert completed his schooling as head boy at King Edward VI School, Southampton. He read Mathematics at Pembroke College, Cambridge, then joined the teaching staff of Westminster School, where Peter Ustinov and Tony Benn were among his pupils.

Robert was ordained by Bishop Winnington Ingram in St Paul's Cathedral, London, and, while continuing to teach Mathematics, he spent much of the rest of his time in prayer and meditation in Westminster Abbey’s St. Faith’s Chapel. At this time he was greatly influenced by the Cowley Fathers, whose house was nearby.

In August, 1939 Fr. Robert took leave to travel to India. There he spent a year with the Cawnpore Brotherhood, a missionary community. It turned out that he was on the last passenger ship for several years to sail through the Suez Canal.

Fr. Robert found it impossible to get back to England after his year in India because of World War II, and he was cajoled into to becoming the headmaster of the Hallet War School. This had been established in an abandoned former Anglo-Indian school, in the foothills of the Himalayas. Robert was asked to create an emergency school for the children of British officials and others who could no longer be sent to public schools in England. A temporary teaching staff was recruited from various parts of the sub-continent, and the school, continuing until the end of the war, was a huge success. Its students’ examination results were comparable to those of long-established English schools.

In 1945 Fr. Robert returned to Westminster School as chaplain, but a year later was invited to go to the Bahamas to establish a diocesan school, St John's College, in Nassau. Under his six years of leadership, the school, with a large, mainly black, student body, thrived.

Fr. Robert was called back to India in 1951 to become headmaster of Sherwood College, the Lucknow diocesan boys' school, which had fallen on hard times and was in danger of closure. He reversed the situation there, and during his 15 years the enrollment reached 500, many of the pupils coming from East Africa.

He returned to England in 1966, India but was immediately asked to return to serve as chaplain to the Wantage Sisters, an outpost of an English religious community at Poona. He also became priest-in-charge of St. Mary's Church, and eventually Archdeacon, though he preferred his ministry in the convent and the prayerful discipline of a monastic life.

Back in England again in 1972, Fr. Robert accepted an invitation to become Warden of Bede House at Staplehurst, Kent, the community of the enclosed Sisters of the Love of God. In addition to celebrating Mass and offering priestly ministry to the nuns, Llewelyn welcomed visitors and travelled to other parts of the country to conduct retreats.

In 1976, as he was about to retire, he received a request to go to Norwich and simply be a “presence” at the shrine of Dame Julian’s cell. The original cell occupied by Julian had long since disappeared, and the church to which it had been attached was itself severely damaged by bombing during the war. A tiny chapel had been rebuilt on what was believed to have been the site of Julian's cell, but wasn’t much used until after Fr. Robert, who publicized its existence to his many contacts arrived.

With a renewed interest in Julian, in large part thanks to Fr. Robert, who remained celibate his whole life, and increasing awareness of the place of women in the Church, Julian’s cell has become a significant focal point of devotion and inspiration for many people of all faiths from around the world. Robert’s contribution was to offer daily prayer, give talks on Julian, her life and Revelations, and, when required, to give spiritual counsel to those who journeyed there.

Fr. Robert’s own spirituality was in some ways very similar to that of Julian. He was aware of the supernatural in everything, and took very seriously reports of visions, voices, healings and coincidences. On one occasion, when wondering whether or not he should retire from his chaplaincy at the shrine, he asked God to remove a small but long-neglected lump from the back of his neck. "Lord, if you make the lump go down, I shall take it as a sign that I should continue my work." Within a few days the lump had disappeared, and Fr. Robert remained at the cell for until he was 81.

There were many influences on Fr. Robert’s spirituality. Certainly in no way neglecting the Anglican tradition, he made several visits to Medjugorje, in Bosnia, the site of six teenagers’ purported appearances from the Virgin Mary. Lourdes was less attractive to him, though he nonetheless made a number of visits there. By way of contrast, Fr. Robert also visited Holy Trinity Church, Brompton, where he had no difficulty in appreciating the spiritual factor in members’ of the congregation falling to the floor or speaking in tongues. His insights into prayer were also deepened by attending a Zen Buddhist retreat.

Robert Llewellyn was a priest of unquestionable holiness of life and a warm human being. Undoubtedly, Fr. Robert read the following words, from Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love, Chapter 64, and savored their meaning: "Suddenly, said our courteous Lord, you will be taken out of all your pain, all your sickness, all your unrest and all your woe. And you will come up above and you will have me for your reward, and you will be filled full of joy and bliss, and you will never again have any kind of pain, any kind of sickness, any kind of displeasure, no lack of will, but always joy and bliss without end. I saw that God rewarded man for the patience which he has in awaiting God's will and his time, and that man has patience to endure throughout the span of his life, because he does not know when the time for him to die will come. It is God's will that so long as the soul is in the body it should seem to a man that he is always on the point of being taken. For all this life and this longing we have here is only an instant of time, and when we are suddenly taken into bliss out of pain, then pain will be nothing."

Do We Get It?

2012-02-05T18:17:00.002-08:00

The context of today’s first reading (Isaiah 40:21-31) is the Israelites’ exile in Babylon. God is about to liberate them through an unlikely figure: Cyrus II of Persia. The reading today comes just after the section in Chapter 40 where: 1) God has announced a new beginning, a new epoch; 2) God prods the people to begin preparing to return from their long exile, and also for God’s coming in glory; 3) God’s incomparability as Creator of all is highlighted and emphasized against merely human nations and empires who, compared to God, are nothing.

God begins by asking rhetorically: “Do you all get it yet??” God is the origin, and the in-between, and the end of everything in our lives.

“Who created these?”, God asks, pointing at the magnificent and vast created world. It’s only in the first lines of Genesis and in this passage that the Hebrew word bara = created is used. It is God who is the Source of beginnings in our lives, God who is the Source sustaining us, and God who is the Source bringing everything to completion, in love. “The Lord is the everlasting God.” And God emphasizes this so much because we forget it so much, especially when preoccupied with the pain and suffering and loss in which we frequently find ourselves.

In v. 27 Israel is on the “pity pot” because of such narrow vision: “My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God.” After all of God’s demonstrated promises and proofs throughout their past history, they’re frustrated, fearful that God has forgotten them and left them alone. If they could look long enough at the big picture, they’d see that human suffering is only temporary, and more, that it’s a necessary part of God’s bigger design. “God gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless...those who wait for the Lord [and not for the “good old days” or “what might have been”] shall renew their strength...”

Mark’s Gospel passage (1:29-39) helps us with this message from a different slant. There are two parts. Part I takes place at Capernaum. Jesus is “on the road” which will eventually lead to Jerusalem and to his death. (Hints of Lent, soon to come, and very appropriate on this Sunday, traditionally known as Septuagesima Sunday: 70 days before Easter.) There’s a progression leading from Christ’s Baptism, to his being led into the desert to be tested, then on to his calling those who would take up his cause, and finally to his being on the road to do his ministry. Mark’s message is that Jesus’ agenda is the same as that of his Father and of the Spirit: namely, to bring God’s reign to reality.

You may notice some similarities to last week’s Gospel where: 1) Jesus, acting on his own, heals someone, the demon-possessed man; and 2) demons are present. They mess up human lives and they fear Jesus. The reason is because they “know” who Jesus is and that they are incapable of being present in our lives along with the Holy One. Though many of the afflicted and of those standing around don’t understand, the demons definitely know who’s in charge.

As Jesus finishes a teaching session in the synagogue, Mark notes that he’s invited to Peter’s house where Peter’s mother-in-law presumably lives with him and his wife. Though Peter’s wife isn’t mentioned specifically here, later, in 1 Corinthians, Paul very clearly refers to her as possibly accompanying Peter on his mission. Perhaps the mother-in-law had the flu: “she was in bed with a fever”, always risky for an older person. In his quiet, gentle way Jesus comes to her and takes her hand. As the fever subsides, she gets up out of the bed, and heads for the kitchen to get them all something to eat, as any good Jewish mother would do! Perhaps Mark inserts this little detail in his Gospel to hold up the mother-in-law as an example to us in looking beyond her own ills to the needs of others.

As so often happens in Jesus’ ministry, it doesn’t take long for the news to get around that he’s done something dramatic, even though he tries so hard to keep a lid on it [what the biblical

scholars refer to as the “Messianic Secret”]. By sundown sick and possessed people are lined up, taking numbers at the home in order to take advantage of a free healing by the Rabbi. Jesus responds tirelessly, healing those with “various diseases” and casting out “many demons”, whom Jesus doesn’t permit to speak.

Mark then shifts immediately to Part II of the reading which takes place the following morning. It represents Mark’s understanding of Jesus’ goals and objectives in proclaiming God’s reign as Jesus himself models them.

First, Jesus is up very early, before dawn, in order to pray. You get the feeling, reading this, that it was part of Jesus’ regular routine. He goes to a “deserted place”, though obviously not a desert, a place of silence. He communes with the Holy Source of his healing ministry and of his preaching power. But his peace is short-lived, because Peter and the gang come hunting for him, and loudly announce that “Everyone” is looking for Jesus! [Every parish rector/vicar on Sunday morning can identify with this!] It’s not that they’ve suddenly gotten inspired by his preaching about God’s coming reign. They’re focussed on “getting healed”, getting a hand-out, preoccupied with their frustrations, their lack and their emptiness.

Jesus stops the disciples in their tracks by announcing: “We’re moving on, to the neighboring towns, so that I can get on with preaching the message, the Good News: ‘for that is what I

came to do.’” And Mark notes that he did just that: preached “throughout Galilee” in the synagogues and cast out demons. Now think about this for a minute. Suppose you’d brought

yourself, or perhaps your spouse or your child to Capernaum, in an impossible physical or mental or spiritual condition, for healing, or at least for advice or a kind word -- and the healer says he’s moving on! What would you be thinking and feeling as you watch him and his band trudge down the road, away from your village?? What do you do now?? Where do you go?? Who will help?? And how, at that moment, would you be feeling toward God?? The fact is that we’ve all probably been there at that place.

Our lives are constantly full of new beginnings, both in happy times and, ironically, in the midst of suffering and difficulty. Some years ago, just after a friend of mine split up with her partner, I reminded her that she could bet that some sort of new call from God was probably in that very situation. Our whole task as human beings and as Christian human beings is to prepare for return from our exiles, and to prepare for God’s coming in glory in our lives. That won’t necessarily be a dramatic end-time event, but rather a quiet coming of God’s reign, through our simple ministries, which we help bring about in our own and others’ lives.

We need to continually ask ourselves: “Do we really get it??”: i.e., the vision of Christ to bring all together in God who is Love through Jesus. Even when we feel left out, frustrated, fearful, angry, God sustains us and renews our strength. Perhaps the best way to know and to recognize that is in and through our demonstrated love for one another.

The Spirit of Love enables us to do this through prayer; through proclaiming the Good News of Love; through speaking the truth to power, when necessary, whether in political or religious realms; through healing others by our thoughts, words, and deeds.

Over the past several years there’ve been many times when I felt a bit like those Israelites whom God addresses in Isaiah’s reading: on my “pity pot”, bemoaning “My way is hidden from the Lord...”, as I’ve watched the progression of my son’s illness, and almost his death at one point. I know only too well what it’s like to feel left behind in frustration, anxiety, and agitation. At the same time, though, I’ve discovered that prayer has become increasingly important, and I’ve uncomfortably experienced God confronting me, as God did the Israelites, with questions: “Have you not known; have you not heard...God gives power to the faint and strengthens the powerless...”

I think that the way I really began to “get it” was through my own dear son, in the midst of his daily struggle to keep going, when in 2009 he sent me a poem he’d written:

In all of us there is a meadow that exists.

It is the place where God exists.

The harsh weather dries the meadow out

to the point where there is no growth.

How can it be a meadow still?

No green, no moisture, nothing that one can walk through

feeling the soft tickle of spires of thin grass on the legs.

God lives in the deep cracks of the earth.

God lives in the constant, cool breeze

that flows through the vast and expansive land we [inhabit].

Gently touch the cracks of the earth -- the dry cold earth --

and God will always grow the green soft grace that soothes the

soul.

You just don't need to see it or smell it

to know that it will grow.

The Meeting Of The Lord

2012-02-02T09:10:00.000-08:00

The Presentation of Jesus in the Temple, which is commemorated today, celebrates an early episode in the life of Jesus. St. Luke, in his Gospel (2:22–40), relates that Mary and Joseph took Jesus the infant to the temple in Jerusalem forty days after his birth, in order to complete Mary's ritual purification after childbirth, and to perform the redemption of the firstborn, as provided for in the Law of Moses (Leviticus 12, Exodus 13:12-15, etc.). Mothers were to offer a lamb, if means permitted; otherwise, “two doves or two young pigeons”. Joseph and Mary chose the second option of sacrifice. Leviticus 12:1-4 indicates that this event should take place forty days after birth for a male child, and so the Church’s liturgy designates February 2 for the Presentation, forty days after Christmas on December 25.

As Mary and Joseph enter the temple with Jesus, they encounter a man named Simeon. Luke describes Simeon as “righteous and devout”, noting that he had been promised that "he would not see death before he had seen the Lord's Messiah" (Luke 2:26). Simeon prays in words which we now refer to as the Nunc Dimittis, or Canticle of Simeon, which prophesied that Jesus would be “a light for revelation” to both Israel and the Gentile nations.

Simeon then says to Mary: "This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed...and a sword will pierce your own soul too...” (Luke 2:34-35).

An elderly prophetess, Anna was also in the Temple, and began to praise to God and to speak about the infant Jesus to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem (Luke 2:36-38).

In the Eastern Orthodox Church and some Eastern Catholic Churches, this feast is sometimes called Hypapante = “meeting”. Other traditional names include Candlemas, the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin, and the Meeting of the Lord. In the Roman Catholic and Episcopal Churches the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord marks the conclusion of the season of Epiphany.

As mentioned earlier, the date of Candlemas is established by the date set for the Nativity of Jesus, and comes forty days afterwards. The Jewish Torah provided that a mother who had given birth to a male child was considered unclean for seven days. Further, she was to remain for thirty-three days "in the blood of her purification." Candlemas corresponds to the day on which Mary, according to Jewish law, would have participated in a ceremony of ritual purification. Luke relates that Mary was purified according to the religious law, followed by Jesus' presentation in the temple.

Traditionally the Western term Candlemas, or Candle Mass, referred to the practice of blessing beeswax candles on February 2, and of distributing some of them to church members for use throughout the year in their homes. In Poland the feast is called the "Holiday of the Mother of God of Thunder", referring to gromnicy, candles which were lit during thunder storms and placed in windows to ward off storms.

Within the Roman Catholic Church, since the liturgical revisions of Vatican Council II, references to candles and the purification of Mary have been de-emphasised in favor of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple. Though it is certainly a pious fiction, according to over eight centuries of tradition, the swaddling clothes which Jesus the infant wore during the Presentation are kept and venerated in Dubrovnik Cathedral, Croatia.

The Feast of the Presentation is among the most ancient feasts of the Church. There are sermons on the Feast by 4th century bishops Methodius of Patara, Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory the Theologian, and 5th century bishops Gregory of Nyssa and John Chrysostom. The earliest reference to specific liturgical rites surrounding the feast have been handed down to us from the travelling 4th century nun, Egeria, during her pilgrimage to the Holy Land. She reported that February 14 was a day solemnly kept in Jerusalem with a procession to Constantine I's Basilica of the Resurrection, with a homily preached on Luke 2:22, and a Divine Liturgy. This so-called Itinerarium Peregrinatio = Pilgrimage Itinerary of Egeria doesn’t, however, offer a specific name for the feast. The date she reports in Jerusalem at that time, would indicate that Christ's birth had been celebrated there on January 6.

Originally, the Feast of the Meeting of the Lord was a minor celebration. In 541 a terrible plague broke out in Constantinople, killing thousands. The Emperor of the Eastern Empire, Justinian I, in consultation with the Patriarch of Constantinople, ordered a period of fasting and prayer throughout the entire Empire. On the Feast of the Meeting of the Lord, great processions throughout the towns and villages were arranged, and a solemn prayer service to ask for deliverance from evils. The plague ceased, and in thanksgiving, the feast was elevated to a more solemn celebration in 542.

In Rome, the feast appears as early as the seventh and eighth centuries. There it carried for the first time the new title of the Feast of Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Candlemas is the most ancient of all the festivals in honor of the Virgin Mary. The date of the feast in Rome was moved forward to February 2, since during the late fourth century the Roman feast of Christ's Nativity was introduced as December 25.

The feast actually spread slowly in the West. The tenth century Benedictional of St. Æthelwold, bishop of Winchester, contains a formula used for the blessing of candles. Candlemas also become important enough to find its way into the secular calendar. It became the traditional day to remove the cattle from the hay meadows, and from the field that was to be ploughed and sown in the spring. References to it are common in later medieval and early Modern literature; Shakespeare's Twelfth Night is recorded as having its first performance on Candlemas Day, 1602.

Down with the rosemary, and so 

Down with the bays and mistletoe; 

Down with the holly, ivy, all, 

Wherewith ye dress'd the Christmas Hall

(Robert Herrick [1591–1674], Ceremony upon Candlemas Eve)

As the poem indicates, the eve of Candlemas was the day on which Christmas decorations and greenery were removed from people's homes, for traces of berries, holly, etc. will bring death among the congregation before another year is out. Another tradition holds that anyone who hears funeral bells tolling on Candlemas will soon hear of the death of a close friend or relative. Each toll of the bell represents a day that will pass before the unfortunate news is learned.

In Scotland, until a change in the law in 1991, and in much of northern England until the 18th century, Candlemas was one of the traditional quarter days when quarterly rents were due for payment, as well as the day for various other business transactions, including the hiring of servants.

In the United Kingdom, good weather at Candlemas is taken to indicate severe winter weather later: "If Candlemas Day is clear and bright, / winter will have another bite. / If Candlemas Day brings cloud and rain, / winter is gone and will not come again." It is also alleged to be the date that bears emerge from hibernation to inspect the weather as well as wolves, who if they choose to return to their lairs on this day is interpreted as meaning severe weather will continue for another forty days at least. Thus, our American tradition of “Groundhog Day”. The earliest American reference to Groundhog Day can be found at the Pennsylvania Dutch Folklore Center at Franklin and Marshall College: “Last Tuesday, the 2nd, was Candlemas day, the day on which, according to the Germans, the Groundhog peeps out of his winter quarters and if he sees his shadow he pops back for another six weeks nap, but if the day be cloudy he remains out, as the weather is to be moderate.” (February 4, 1841 — from Morgantown, Berks County (Pennsylvania) storekeeper James Morris' diary)

The Carmina Gadelica, an important collection of Scottish folklore, refers to a serpent coming out of the mound on Latha Fheill Bride, as the Scots call Candlemas. This rhyme is still used in the West Highlands and Hebrides:

“Moch maduinn Bhride, Thig an nimhir as an toll; Cha bhoin mise ris an nimhir, Cha bhoin an nimhir rium.
Early on Bride's morn, the serpent will come from the hollow. I will not molest the serpent, nor will the serpent molest me.
Thig an nathair as an toll, la donn Bride Ged robh tri traighean dh' an t-sneachd air leachd an lair.
The serpent will come from the hollow on the brown day of Bride, Though there should be three feet of snow on the flat surface of the ground.”

In France, Candlemas (La Chandeleur) is celebrated with crêpes, which must be eaten only after 8:00 PM. If the cook can flip a crêpe while holding a coin in the other hand, the family is assured of prosperity throughout the coming year.

In Italy, traditionally, La Candelora is considered the last cold day of winter.

In Tenerife, Spain, February 2 is the feast of the Virgin of Candelaria, patron of the Canary Islands.

In Southern and Central Mexico, and Guatemala City, Candlemas (Día de La Candelaria) is celebrated with tamales. Tradition indicates that on January 5, the night before the Epiphany, whoever gets one or more of the few plastic or metal dolls (originally coins) buried within the Rosca de Reyes must pay for the tamales and throw a party on Candlemas. In certain regions of Mexico, this is the day on which the figure of the infant Jesus of each household is taken up from the Nativity scene and dressed up in various colorful, whimsical outfits.

Sailors are often reluctant to set sail on Candlemas Day, believing that any voyage begun then will end in disaster. Given the frequency of severe storms in February, perhaps this makes some sense.

The third prayer of the Blessing of the Candles is a beautiful summation of the message of this feast, and gives us much upon which to reflect:

“Lord Jesus Christ, the true light, you enlighten everyone coming into this world: pour your blessing upon these candles and sanctify them with the light of your grace. Mercifully grant that as these light, enkindled with visible fire, dispel the darkness of night, so our hearts, illumined by invisible fire, that is, the brightness of the Holy Spirit, may be free from the blindness of every vice; that our mental eye may be so purified that we may perceive those things which are pleasing to you and are profitable to our salvation, so that after the dark perils of this world, we may deserve to come into that never-failing light: through you, Christ Jesus, Savior of the world, who in perfect Trinity live and reign, God, world without end. Amen.”

Brigid of Kildare: Animals, Fire & Beer

2012-02-01T13:13:00.000-08:00

There are many stories about Brigid of Kildare's concern for the needs of others, including animals. One tells of her taming of a wolf at the request of a local chieftain whose dog had died when a peasant accidentally killed it. She also loved birds, as is evidenced in the Gaelic name given to the oyster-catching bird: gall-brigade. On one occasion, according to her biographer, Cogitosus, she saw some ducks swimming in the water and occasionally taking wing. Overcome with tenderness, she watched as the flock took off and flew towards her. She took them in hand and embraced them tenderly, then released them to fly away again. Cogitosus says: "And as they did so she praised God the Creator of all living things, to whom all life is subject, and for the services of whom all life is gift." Another time, it is said, a wild boar was being hunted and charged out of the forest and, in panic, ended up in the midst of Brigid's herd of pigs. When she saw the boar, she blessed it and it became calm, settling down quietly with the rest of the herd.

Kildare, where Brigid gathered a group of women, and later men, into a community of nuns and monks, had formerly been a pagan shrine where a sacred fire was kept perpetually burning. Instead of stamping out the fire, Brigid and her nuns kept it going, but interpreted it in a Christian way. This was in keeping with the general process in Ireland whereby Druidism was supplanted by Christianity with minimal opposition. Many Druids felt that their own beliefs were a partial and tentative insight into the nature of God, and many recognized in Christianity what they'd been looking for.

Perhaps my favorite bit of lore about the "Mary of the Gaels" is the prayer attributed to St. Brigid:

I'd like to give a lake of beer to God;

I'd love the heavenly host to be tippling there for all eternity

I'd love the men of heaven to live with me to dance and sing

If they wanted, I'd put at their disposal vats of suffering

White cups of love. I'd give them with a heart and a half;

Sweet pitchers of mercy I'd offer to every man.

I'd make heaven a cheerful spot

Because the happy heart is true.

I'd make people contented for their own sake

I'd like Jesus to love me too.

I'd like the people of heaven to gather from all the parishes around;

I'd give special welcome to the women

The three Marys of great renown.

I'd sit with the men, the women, of God

There by the lake of beer;

We'd be drinking good health for ever

And every drop would be a prayer.

Who Is A Prophet?

2012-01-29T20:40:00.000-08:00

(by James Tissot)

Massud Farzan (b. 1936), a contemporary Iranian poet, critic, short-story writer, and translator, relates a story about a man claiming to be God. He was taken to the Caliph who said, “Last year someone was claiming to be a prophet. He was executed.” “Serves him right,” the man replied, “I hadn’t sent him.”

How many people have there been throughout the centuries who have claimed to be prophets? Generally, these are folks who, rightly or wrongly, challenge society’s institutions. Today’s first reading (Deuteronomy 18:15-20) speaks of the prophetic office in general. Contrary to common popular understanding, a biblical prophet isn’t first and foremost a future-teller, but rather a spokesperson, an intermediary for the Divine. There are some criteria, as the reading intimates, for distinguishing a true prophet from a false one. The true prophet speaks in the One God’s name, not in the name of other so-called deities. False prophets claim God’s inspiration even though they know that they don’t have it. Our Sunday TV stations are rife with examples of such claims. Many of these false prophets, perhaps, are sincere in their zeal, but nevertheless speak mistakenly. I believe that Joseph Smith, responsible for Mormonism, is a classic example. The author of Deuteronomy hints that one needs to wait and see, in order to evaluate the fruits of a person’s claim. St. Paul grappled throughout his missionary career with folks who considered themselves spokespersons for God regarding the structure, theology and practices of the churches which he had established.

Paul carries the conversation on prophets further with the Corinthian community in the second reading (1 Corinthians 8:1-13). There are two kinds of “prophetic” knowledge, he says: 1) a knowledge which “puffs up”, the kind which a person, called or not by God, thinks s/he knows, but doesn’t; and 2) the knowledge which comes from sharing God’s love with others. Paul uses an example which doesn’t speak much to us today, perhaps: the use of meat offered in idol worship. Gnostic libertines in his time were using their “inside” knowledge to exalt themselves, while scandalizing their neighbor. Paul’s contention is that to sin against Christ by sinning against one another is a sure sign of one’s being a false prophet. No amount of “spiritual knowledge” justifies unloving regard of a sister or brother.

At the Eucharist which I attended this morning, the translation used for the second reading was taken from Eugene Peterson’s wonderful paraphrase, The Message, and I feel it’s useful to share it here because of the unique way it conveys what, I believe, Paul is trying to express:

“The question keeps coming up regarding meat that has been offered up to an idol: Should you attend meals where such meat is served, or not? We sometimes tend to think we know all we need to know to answer these kinds of questions—but sometimes our humble hearts can help us more than our proud minds. We never really know enough until we recognize that God alone knows it all.

Some people say, quite rightly, that idols have no actual existence, that there's nothing to them, that there is no God other than our one God, that no matter how many of these so-called gods are named and worshiped they still don't add up to anything but a tall story. They say—again, quite rightly—that there is only one God the Father, that everything comes from him, and that he wants us to live for him. Also, they say that there is only one Master—Jesus the Messiah—and that everything is for his sake, including us. Yes. It's true.

In strict logic, then, nothing happened to the meat when it was offered up to an idol. It's just like any other meat. I know that, and you know that. But knowing isn't everything. If it becomes everything, some people end up as know-it-alls who treat others as know-nothings. Real knowledge isn't that insensitive.

We need to be sensitive to the fact that we're not all at the same level of understanding in this. Some of you have spent your entire lives eating "idol meat," and are sure that there's something bad in the meat that then becomes something bad inside of you. An imagination and conscience shaped under those conditions isn't going to change overnight.

But fortunately God doesn't grade us on our diet. We're neither commended when we clean our plate nor reprimanded when we just can't stomach it. But God does care when you use your freedom carelessly in a way that leads a fellow believer still vulnerable to those old associations to be thrown off track.

For instance, say you flaunt your freedom by going to a banquet thrown in honor of idols, where the main course is meat sacrificed to idols. Isn't there great danger if someone still struggling over this issue, someone who looks up to you as knowledgeable and mature, sees you go into that banquet? The danger is that he will become terribly confused—maybe even to the point of getting mixed up himself in what his conscience tells him is wrong.

Christ gave up his life for that person. Wouldn't you at least be willing to give up going to dinner for him—because, as you say, it doesn't really make any difference? But it does make a difference if you hurt your friend terribly, risking his eternal ruin! When you hurt your friend, you hurt Christ. A free meal here and there isn't worth it at the cost of even one of these "weak ones." So, never go to these idol-tainted meals if there's any chance it will trip up one of your brothers or sisters.”

The only authentic prophet, spokesperson for, or intermediary for God is Jesus whose relationship of love with God is so close as to constitute an identity with God. In the Gospel (Mark 1:21-28) Mark shows Jesus' authority by portraying him as a wonder-worker and healer, by putting the story within a framework which shows Jesus of Nazareth as teacher/prophet speaking with authority. The Greek word used for "authority", exousia, means something like “out of one’s own existence/self; mastery; taking charge; presence". The Latin equivalent, auctoritas, derives from the word for “to help increase/grow”. Jesus silences falsity and evil because he is the Holy One of God. Instead of “puffing up”, he builds up through love. He enables people to grow because he knows, and is known, by God, the source of love.

It’s possible even for you and me, at times, to mistakenly think of ourselves as, or to act like, a "prophet", to presume to speak for God. There are always people who feel compelled to speak out and to challenge society’s institutions, both civil and religious, and we’re seeing much of that currently. That’s actually good, for institutions need to be held accountable in order to truly serve the common good of humankind. History has repeatedly demonstrated how ecclesiastical and governmental systems get “puffed up” and fail to meet their responsibilities to society. Losing sight of the common good, institutional leaders, because they're human, are prone to become selfish and corrupt, to repress and oppress, through misused power and greed, the very people whom God intends for them to serve. In a way, they almost make necessary the appearance of outspoken, zealous, concerned, even angry, opponents who prick their consciences and put the spotlight on their shortcomings and sometimes willful maliciousness.

The danger with prophets, with those who attempt to speak for God, is perspective. Only those who continuously and intentionally seek to know and are known by God are able to keep any kind of balance. Too often, self-proclaimed prophets are tempted to put their supposed expertise or spiritual knowledge above what is genuinely for the good of all. Pride has a way of leading one to become a law to oneself, so much so that one can sometimes judge legitimate civil or religious institutions themselves as unnecessary, something, curiously, which God hasn’t seem to have found necessary in all of human history! John Wesley gives some sobering advice to aspiring prophets: “Do not hastily ascribe things to God. Do not easily suppose voices, dreams, impressions, visions or revelations to be from God. They may be from God. They may be from nature. They may be from the devil.”

As followers of Jesus the Holy One, the only true measure of whether or not we speak authentically for the Gospel is Jesus himself. As members of the Church and as citizens of society we need to continually ask ourselves: “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?” We deserve no hearing unless we speak by his authority, by his presence.

United In The Reign of Christ

2012-01-25T09:32:00.000-08:00

"...whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ,* the righteousness from God based on faith. I want to know Christ* and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead." (Letter to the Philippians 3:7-11)

Day Eight: United in the Reign of Christ
To the one who conquers I will give a place with me on my throne (Revalations. 3:21)

On this last day of our week of prayer for Christian Unity we celebrate the Reign of Christ. Christ's victory enables us to look into the future with hope. This victory overcomes all that keeps us from sharing fullness of life with him and with each other. Christians know that unity among us is above all a gift of God. It is a share in Christ's glorious victory over all that divides.

In what ways do false humility and a desire for earthly glory manifest themselves in our lives?

How do we express together our faith in the Reign of Christ?

How do we live out our hope in the coming Kingdom of God?

The Good Shepherd: Source Of Strength

2012-01-24T12:14:00.000-08:00

John's Gospel sets before us the great "I am" sayings which convey the message that Jesus is one with God. In John 10 Jesus says: twice: “I am the gate for the sheep...”. And you, says the Good Shepherd, can be part of the “sheep-herd”, the flock, the community of koinonia, of fellowship, only through “entering”, through becoming one with the One who is both the gate and the Shepherd. Who wouldn’t wish to be part of Jesus’ fellowship!? For He promises to each one who enters: salvation; open access to God, 24/7; nourishment beyond measure; and life, eternal life: and all of this ”abundantly”.

We probably wouldn’t have chosen sheep as the image for Jesus’ followers, possibly because you and I realize that we have more in common with sheep than we want to admit! Yet Jesus refers to Himself in terms very familiar to his hearers: "I am the good, the noble, Shepherd." Each time we gather in community around the Lord's Table we come ready to share the Lord’s abundance in our fellowship of hearing the Apostles’ teaching, of bread-breaking, and of prayer. Our hearts listen for, often straining to hear, the voice of the Good Shepherd who patiently draws us to peace and reconciliation: to the koinonia, the fellowship of the Communion of Saints. Though the places in which we live and work will still require us to struggle with fear, anger, and violence, here, in Communion, we encounter the Risen Lord. Here you and I are abundantly fed for the journey ahead. And as we're fed, we’re invited to now be willing to go forth and feed others in the name of the Good Shepherd.

Day Seven: Changed by the Good Shepherd
Feed my sheep (John 21:19)

On this day the Bible texts show us the Lord strengthening His flock. Following the Good Shepherd, we are called to strengthen each other in the Lord, and to support and fortify the weak and the lost. There is one Shepherd, and we are his people.

How does the Good Shepherd inspire us to comfort, revive, and restore the confidence of those who are lost?

In what ways can Christians of various traditions strengthen each other in confessing and bearing witness to Jesus Christ?

For us today, what can be the meaning of St Paul's exhortation: "Be strong in the Lord.... put on the whole armour of God"?

Bishop Phillips Brooks: Greatest Preacher of the 19th Century

2012-01-23T17:47:00.000-08:00

The Right Honorable, The 1st Viscount, James Bryce (1838-1922), who became the British Ambassador to the United States in 1907, a jurist, historian, and politician, knew the Episcopal Bishop of Massachusetts, Phillips Brooks (1835-1893) and had heard him preach. In comparing Brooks to some of the great preachers of the time: Wilberforce, Spurgeon, Henry Ward Beecher, etc., Bryce wrote: "All these famous men were, in a sense, more
brilliant, that is to say, more rhetorically effective, than Dr. Brooks, yet none of them seemed to speak so directly to the soul. With all of them it was impossible to forget the speaker in the words spoken, because the speaker did not seem to have quite forgotten himself, but to have studied the effect he sought to produce. With him it was otherwise. What amount of preparation he may have given to his discourses I do not know. But there was no sign of art about them, no touch of self-consciousness. He spoke to his audience as a man might speak to his friend, pouring forth with swift, yet quiet and seldom impassioned, earnestness the thoughts and feelings of a singularly pure and lofty spirit...Dr. Brooks was the best because the most edifying of preachers...no others among the famous preachers of the generation that is now vanishing approached him...”

Brooks' words on the Church and the sacraments are especially appropriate during this Week of Prayer for Christian and Interfaith Unity: "The Church is no exception and afterthought in the world, but is the survival and preservation of the world's first idea -- the anticipation and prophecy of the world's final perfectness. The Church of Christ is the ideal humanity. Say not that it leaves out the superhuman. I know no ideal humanity that is not filled and pervaded with the superhuman. God in man is not unnatural, but the absolutely natural. That is what the Incarnation makes us know..."

Regarding the sacraments Brooks says: "The unity of [Christ's] believers to the end of time is still to have the secret of its existence in the personal relation between each of them and him. To help this invisible relation to realize itself and not to be all lost in the unseen, the gracious kindness of the Master provides two symbols [Baptism and the Eucharist] which thenceforth become the pledges at once of the personal believer's belonging to the Lord and of the belonging of believers to each other. The sacraments are set like gems to hold the Church into its precious unity..."

Steadfast Love: The Foundation of Unity

2012-01-23T13:56:00.000-08:00

Day Six: Changed by God's Steadfast Love
This is the victory, our faith (cf. 1 John 5:4)

On this day we concentrate our attention on God's steadfast love. The Paschal Mystery reveals this steadfast love, and calls us to a new way of faith. This faith overcomes fear and opens our hearts to the power of the Spirit. Such faith calls us to friendship with Christ, and so to one another.

How should we express Christian love in contexts of different religions and philosophies?
What must we do to become more credible witnesses of God´s steadfast love in a divided world?
How can Christ's followers more visibly support one another throughout the world?

The Peace of the Risen Savior

2012-01-22T07:02:00.000-08:00

Day Five: Changed by the peace of the Risen Lord
Jesus stood among them and said: Peace be with you! (John 20:19)

Today we celebrate the peace of the Risen Lord. The Risen One is the great Victor over death and the world of darkness. He unites His disciples, who were paralysed with fear. He opens up before us new prospects of life and of acting for His coming kingdom. The Risen Lord unites and strengthens all believers. Peace and unity are the hallmarks of our transformation in the resurrection.

What forms of violence in our community can we as Christians confront together?

How do we experience hidden hostilities that affect our relationship to each other as Christian communities?

How can we learn to welcome each other as Christ welcomes us?

Lesson From A Reluctant Prophet

2012-01-22T06:58:00.000-08:00

In the book The Diary of a Country Priest, the author, George Bernanos, describes the ministry of a self-effacing and unsuccessful country pastor. Most of the time the pastor is inept. The village he serves ignores him, and his parish all but abandons him. There’s one wealthy parishioner who is particularly harsh. In part it’s because of her own personal bitterness toward God.

As this woman approaches her death, however, the priest somehow breaks through and helps her surrender to God’s eternal life. Later he reflects on the event: “’Be at peace,’ I told her. And she knelt to receive this peace. May she keep it forever. It will be I that gave it to her. Oh, miracle, thus to be able to give what we ourselves do not possess, sweet miracle of our empty hands.”

The lesson which the story of Jonah today holds out to us (Jonah 3:1-5; 10) is one of the most important in the Bible. Jonah, clearly, was a man of “empty hands”, empty by his own stubborn choice. Jonah had a unique call from God to go and speak in God’s place to the people of Nineveh, capital of the Assyrians, one of Israel’s hated enemies. God commissioned Jonah to call that people to repentance, but he would not go. “...Jonah set out to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.”

As you know from reading the story, the ship, which he boards, and the crew experience a dreadful, life-threatening storm. Eventually the sailors suspect that Jonah may be the cause of God’s apparent displeasure. Jonah, indeed, confesses that he’s fleeing the Lord’s presence and from his responsibilities. As the storm grows worse, Jonah suggests that if the sailors throw him overboard, God might be appeased, since he’s the cause of the trouble. Reluctantly, they do so.

“And the Lord,” says Scripture, “appointed a great fish to swallow up Jonah...” Jonah suddenly has a lot of time on his hands to reflect and get things right within himself, with God, and with his neighbor: three whole days and nights! He begins to pray, and his prayer gives us some sense that perhaps it’s beginning to dawn on Jonah that God is the One who’s really in charge here. At length, God has the fish unceremoniously spit Jonah out on the dry land.

On the second try, in Chapter 3 where today’s reading begins, God convinces a freshly-motivated Jonah to finally take on the mission to Nineveh. Apparently, Nineveh was a b-i-i-i-g city, because it took three days and three nights to walk across it! Jonah gets only a third of the way across the city (a day’s walk) with his call to repentance when he experiences what surely is every pastor’s dream. “The people of Nineveh believed God.” After all his fussing and running away, this prophet had only eight words to proclaim: “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” The city grinds to a halt; they proclaim a fast; everyone, including the king and even the animals, puts on sackcloth; and the whole city turns from evil and violence, to God. God assesses the situation and has a change of heart. God is so impressed with their attitude that God surrounds them with mercy, forgiveness and compassion.

Now, you’d think that with that kind of success Jonah would’ve been beside himself with joy and appreciation, and would’ve recommitted his own life to God on the spot, and preached to those Ninevites with a fervor that would make Billy Graham seem like a first-year church school teacher. But Jonah’s response is to be angry! You see, Jonah struggles, as we all do, to understand the God he serves. How could God allow God’s “soft” side, God’s mercy, to leave unfulfilled the oracle of just judgment which Godself had pushed Jonah to pronounce upon these godless, violent aliens? God “had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction God had threatened...” Jonah’s heart is full of resentment and bitterness toward God for sending him to a non-Israelite, non-covenanted people (the wrong “denomination”, so to speak!), and he resents the Ninevites because all along, on the journey and now, both the sailors and now the Ninevites acted with more faith than he, God’s prophet, had. They repented, changed their lives, opened their hearts to God the Mighty One, while Jonah remains empty-handed and without peace.

In a gesture that make us further question his mental stability, Jonah removes himself to a tent in “East Nineveh” and waits. In his hard heart Jonah suspects that Nineveh’s conversion is only temporary. Sooner or later, he figures, they’ll go back to business as usual, and then we’ll see how much lovingkindness and mercy God is willing to show them. So,

Jonah waits.

But it never happens. Their conversion is real. And Jonah is left sitting there, baking in the hot sun. The Lord, “gracious and full of compassion...loving to everyone...faithful in all God’s words and merciful in all God’s deeds...”, allows a plant to grow to provide some shade for Jonah. Jonah would never say it, for he’s not speaking to God at the moment, but the shade of the plant feels pretty good. The next day, however, Jonah notices that the leaves are slowly dropping off one by one; the plant is withering, dying -- very much like the way Jonah is feeling inside -- and his depression deepens. A fat worm has found the succulent plant, and soon there’s no more shade. The sun is so relentless that Jonah almost suffers heat-stroke, and Jonah is angry at God for killing the plant, let alone for making the Assyrian Empire’s capital city the beneficiary of God’s lovingkindness. In his deep despair, Jonah voices a death-wish. “It is better for me to die than to live.” You and I would phrase that a little differently: “It isn’t fair!”; “Why?”; “Why me?”; “What kind of God are you?” God gently sets the record straight: “You pity the plant for which you didn’t labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night, and perished in a night. And should I not pity Nineveh...?”

There are a couple of things which you and I might take away from all this. Like Jonah, you and I, individually and collectively as the Church, all have a unique call through our Baptism to engage in God’s mission and ministry. And that’s the point: it’s God’s call and God’s work. Anything we do needs to be in accord with what God wants. Could it be that part of Jonah’s problem was his struggle to understand how God had changed his role as prophet from being a deliverer of oracles to that of being a persuader? God has the option to change God’s decisions when people truly repent. When that occurs, we who are sent from God are called to preach, to model, to arouse a change in others’ hearts. And that’s hard to do, perhaps impossible, if one’s own heart hasn’t yet been changed, if it lacks much love and mercy as it tries to dispense justice in the name of God.

God’s will for us and in us, individually and as the Church, can be accomplished only if you and I are willing to humbly acknowledge our own unlovingness, our abrasive rigidity, our human inadequacy, our inability of ourselves to hold out anything to God or to each other except our empty hands. The “sweet miracle of our empty hands” is God’s. When you and I are too proud, too unloving, too controlling, to allow God’s Spirit to do God’s will, in God’s way in our lives and in the Church’s life, we can be sure that, like Jonah, we’re running in the opposite direction from God’s Presence. You and I are called daily to test the authenticity of those words which we pray so often: “...For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours, now and forever...”

2012-01-21T08:58:00.000-08:00

"...evil may be not seeing well enough, so perhaps to become less evil we need only to see more, see what we didn't see before..." (Corita Kent, Footnotes And Headlines: a play-pray book)

Day Four: Changed by the Lord's Victory over Evil
Overcome evil with good (Romans 12:21)

This day takes us deeper into the struggles against evil. Victory in Christ is an overcoming of all that damages God's creation, and keeps us apart from one another. In Jesus we are called to share in this new life, struggling with him against what is wrong in our world, with renewed confidence and with a delight in what is good. In our divisions we cannot be strong enough to overcome evil in our times.

Where do we see evil in our own lives?

In what way can our faith in Christ help us to overcome evil and the Evil One?

What can we learn from situations in our community where division has given way to reconciliation?

Passion Without Honor

2012-01-20T09:56:00.000-08:00

Some of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's most eloquent theological commentary on suffering is found in his The Cost of Discipleship: "...The call to follow is closely connected with Jesus' prediction of the passion. Jesus Christ must suffer and be rejected. This 'must' is inherent in the promise of God -- the Scripture must be fulfilled. There is a distinction here between suffering and rejection. Had he only suffered, Jesus might still have been applauded as the Messiah. All the sympathy and admiration of the world might have been focused on his passion. It could have been viewed as a tragedy with its own intrinsic value, dignity and honor. But in the passion Jesus is a rejected Messiah. His rejection robs the passion of its halo of glory. It must be a passion without honor. Suffering and rejection sum up the whole cross of Jesus. To die on the cross means to die despised and rejected of men. Suffering and rejection are laid upon Jesus as a divine necessity, and every attempt to prevent it is the work of the devil, especially when it comes from his own disciples; for it is in fact an attempt to prevent Christ from being Christ. It is Peter, the Rock of the Church, who commits that sin, immediately after he has confessed Jesus as the Messiah and has been appointed to the primacy. That shows how the very notion of a suffering Messiah was a scandal to the Church, even in its earliest days. That is not the kind of Lord it wants, and as the Church of Christ it does not like to have the law of suffering imposed upon it by its Lord. Peter's protest displays his own unwillingness to suffer, and that means that Satan has gained entry into the Church, and is trying to tear it away from the cross of its Lord.

Jesus must therefore make it clear beyond all doubt that the 'must' of suffering applies to his disciples no less than to himself. Just as Christ only in virtue of his suffering and rejection, so the disciple is a disciple only in so far as he shares his Lord's suffering and rejection and crucifixion. Discipleship means adherence to the person of Jesus, and therefore submission to the law of Christ which is the law of the cross..."

Day Three: Changed by the Suffering Servant
Christ suffered for us (cf. 1 Peter 2:21)

This day calls us to reflect on the suffering of Christ. Following Christ the Suffering Servant, Christians are called to solidarity with all who suffer. The closer we come to the cross of Christ the closer we come to one another.

How can our faith help us in our response to long-lasting suffering?

What areas of human suffering are unnoticed and belittled today?

How can Christians bear witness together to the power of the cross?

Waiting

2012-01-19T11:43:00.000-08:00

It would be interesting to be able to tally up the hours any of us have spent waiting in lines throughout the course of our years. Waiting takes on many aspects for each of us, depending on what or who it is that we await. Waiting in an emergency room for news of a loved one's condition differs from waiting in line to receive one's college diploma. Waiting for a train taking you off to a foreign country for military duty is quite different from waiting in line for an order of McNuggets. Then, there's the waiting for God: for the numinous and the Divine to make Itself known in our hearts and souls.

In his Four Quartets T. S. Eliot says: "...the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting..."The Psalmist advises: "Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage..."

Today the Week of Prayer for Christian and Interfaith Unity focusses on this theme of waiting:

Day Two: Changed through patient waiting for the Lord
Let it be so now, for it is proper to fulfil all righteousness (Matt. 3:15)

On this day we concentrate on patient waiting for the Lord. To achieve any change, perseverance and patience are needed. Prayer to God for any kind of transformation is also an act of faith and trust in his promises. Such waiting for the Lord is essential for all who pray for the visible unity of the church this week. All ecumenical activities require time, mutual attention and joint action. We are all called to co-operate with the work of the Spirit in uniting Christians.

In what situations in our life should we have a greater trust in God's promises?

What areas of church life are particularly at risk from the temptation to act hastily?

In what situations should Christians wait, and when should they act together?

Week of Prayer for Christian & Interfaith Unity

2012-01-18T10:51:00.000-08:00

Though I realize that the emphasis of the annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity is largely Christian in nature, personally I find it more and more difficult to think in such limited terms. For me the desire for unity and wholeness among believers needs to be all-inclusive and to embrace all people of religious faith. It's hard enough working for common tolerance and understanding among the Christian churches, some of whom appear to be "Christian" in name only, to judge by some of the social and political stances they're taking these days! The ecumenical picture and vision, I believe, is much larger.

The Graymoor Friars in New York have spearheaded the annual celebration and the ecumenical movement for a long time. Graymoor has continued to issue the annual materials for celebrating the Week of Prayer. Its introduction of the 2012 theme says this: "The material for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity in 2012 was prepared by a working group composed of representatives of the Roman Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church and Old Catholic and Protestant Churches active in Poland.

Following extensive discussions in which the representatives of various ecumenical circles in Poland took part, it was decided to focus on a theme that is concerned with the transformative power of faith in Christ, particularly in relation to our praying for the visible unity of the Church, the Body of Christ. This was based on St. Paul's words to the Corinthian Church which speaks of the temporary nature of our present lives (with all its apparent "victory" and "defeat") in comparison to what we receive through the victory of Christ through the Paschal mystery."

The first reading in Morning Prayer (Ezechiel 3:4-11) for this day's commemoration of the Confession of St. Peter certainly gives ancient testimony to the difficulty of fostering unity among followers of the one God and of his Son, Jesus the Christ: "He said to me: Mortal, go to the house of Israel and speak my very words to them. For you are not sent to a people of obscure speech and difficult language, but to the house of Israel— not to many peoples of obscure speech and difficult language, whose words you cannot understand. Surely, if I sent you to them, they would listen to you. But the house of Israel will not listen to you, for they are not willing to listen to me; because all the house of Israel have a hard forehead and a stubborn heart. See, I have made your face hard against their faces, and your forehead hard against their foreheads. Like the hardest stone, harder than flint, I have made your forehead; do not fear them or be dismayed at their looks, for they are a rebellious house. He said to me: Mortal, all my words that I shall speak to you receive in your heart and hear with your ears; then go to the exiles, to your people, and speak to them. Say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord God’; whether they hear or refuse to hear." (Emphasis mine)

The Christian Church finds it no less difficult today to allow "[God's] very words to them" to be spoken, much less acted upon and lived. We followers of Jesus too often exhibit "a hard forehead and a stubborn heart", displaying ourselves to the world as "a rebellious house", rather than as determined bearers of the compassion, justice and peace of a loving God.

Perhaps we can take to heart, on this first day of the Week of Prayer for Christian & Interfaith Unity, the reflection suggested in the Graymoor material:

Day One: Changed by the Servant Christ
The Son of Man came to serve (cf. Mark 10:45)

On this day we encounter Jesus, on the road to victory through service. We see him as the "one who came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life, a ransom for many" (Mark 10:45). Consequently, the Church of Jesus Christ is a serving community. The use of our diverse gifts in common service to humanity makes visible our unity in Christ.

What opportunities for service are most threatened by pride and arrogance?
What should be done to ensure that all Christian ministries are better experienced as service?
In our community, what can Christians of different traditions do better together than in isolation to reveal the Servant Christ?

Lord God, we thank you for sending your Son Jesus Christ to gather all peoples

into the one communion of love and life through your Holy Spirit.

We thank you for reminding us in our day to extend every effort

to maintain the unity of the followers of Christ for which he so fervently prayed.

We ask today that this unity, this gift of the Holy Spirit, be so renewed

among our churches that they will overcome obstacles that hinder

a fuller expression of this gift and prevent a stronger witness to your love in Christ,

through the Spirit with whom You live and reign forever and ever. Amen.

A Call To Vision

2012-01-15T19:13:00.000-08:00

“In those days the word of the Lord was rarely heard; there was no outpouring of vision.” (Revised English Version)

In thanksgiving for God answering Hannah’s prayer to give her a son, she dedicated Samuel as a child to minister to God under the supervision of the priest, Eli. (1 Samuel 1:24-28) Eli’s two sons, Hophni and Phineas, were rogue priests who misused their position by becoming sexual predators on women who served at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting, as well as by greedily grabbing, possibly along with their father, the choicest portions of the Israelites’ sacrificial offerings. Eli is pictured by the author of 1 Samuel as a weak, wimpy parent, at best.

Today’s first reading (1 Samuel 3:1-20) begins with the author’s notation that God’s word was “rare” in those days. God was silent; God’s ministers didn’t speak much about God. God’s people generally lacked vision. Eli is described in the passage as one “whose eyesight had begun to grow dim, so that he could not see...” It’s a visible sign of his interior state of being. Neither he nor his incorrigible, blasphemous sons are pleasing to God. Nevertheless, as the author continues, “the lamp of God had not yet gone out.” There is still hope.

It’s in this context that the boy, Samuel, lying down in God’s temple, hears someone calling, once, then twice: “Samuel, Samuel!” Notice how, at both times when this occurs, Samuel responds unhesitatingly: “Here I am!” Already, though unwittingly, he shows promise of becoming a true servant of God. Yet, it’s pointed out, Samuel “did not yet know the Lord,...the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him.” It’s always God who initiates the call to God’s servant. Each time Samuel hears the voice, thinking that it’s Eli summoning him, he runs to Eli, only to be told that he hadn’t called Samuel. Eli sends him back only to have the process repeated a third time. Finally, Eli “gets it”; it’s the Holy One calling out to Samuel. “Go lie down,” he tells Samuel, and if he calls you again, you shall say, ‘Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.’”

Samuel obeys, a further sign of a genuine servant of God. God, then, “came and stood there”, calling out a fourth time, “Samuel, Samuel”. Samuel responds as Eli prompted him, but notice that he doesn’t speak the word “Lord” -- only “Speak, for your servant is listening.” Samuel is a faithful servant of God: even though he doesn’t know who’s addressing him, he nevertheless responds wholeheartedly.

God intimates that something extremely important is about to said: something that “will make both ears of anyone who hears of it tingle...” As Samuel stands there taking it all in, God reveals God’s intention to exclude Abiathar, Eli’s descendant, as well as his other descendants, from the priesthood, in favor of Zadok and his successors. That was a message which Eli, though he recognized that it was the Lord calling, dreaded hearing!

Samuel, even as young as he is, gets the message loud and clear. And he’s afraid. He “lay there until morning...afraid to tell the vision to Eli.” But Eli calls Samuel, to have verbalized what he was savvy enough to have already figured it out. Eli presses Samuel to tell him the hard truth, and not to hide anything from Eli. Samuel, a truthful servant of God, shares God’s revelation forthrightly. Eli confirms it: “It is the Lord; let him do what seems good to him.” The author concludes simply: “As Samuel grew up, the Lord was with him...All Israel...knew that Samuel was a trustworthy prophet of the Lord.”

When you and I don’t “know” the Lord because of our chronic selfishness and weakness, God’s word can’t get through. Consequently we lack any kind of real spiritual vision and become incapable of genuinely serving God and others. The level of cultural, political, and spiritual intolerance which is apparent today, in the life of our country as well as within the Church, seems to be the fundamental root of our troubles. It’s hard not to recall God’s words in Genesis: “‘My spirit shall not abide in mortals forever, for they are flesh’...The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually...”

Humankind seems to be bent on war on many fronts. Christ’s words continue to fall on deaf ears: “I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you...” (Matthew 5:44) “Put your sword back in its place, for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.” (Matthew 26:52) “For though we live in the world we do not wage war as the world does...We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” (2 Corinthians 10:3-6) How “rare” is the word of God in our own day? Where is the vision?

Particularly in this Week of Prayer for Christian and Interfaith Unity, the call for vision needs to go out to the world anew. 1) A call to be truly people of the Word, people of The Book. God’s Covenant of love applies to all humankind, for we’re all sisters and brothers. Our lives need guidelines, “commandments” if you will, to lead us away from darkness and towards truth. Our generation, at least as much as all other generations, need prophets, such as Martin Luther King, Jr., whose liturgical commemoration is tomorrow, to face us with the hard realities of the dangers of disunity and oppression. Our hearts need to resonate with the Psalms which help us to pray in every imaginable human situation. Most of all, we need the vision of Jesus of Nazareth, the “pioneer and perfecter of our faith” as the model to become women and men of love. 2) A call, as Christians, to live as a covenant community through Baptism, recognizing the inherent worth of every human being, and committing ourselves to equality and justice in every aspect of human life. 3) A call, as Christians, to become a faithful people, not just occasionally, but every single day: centered on Jesus the Christ, seeking continual renewal through the Holy Spirit.

Today’s story of Samuel reminds us of the importance of listening at times when God seems to be calling us to something new. Samuel does this at a time of transition in both his own and Israel’s life. St. Paul hints at a similar situation in the Epistle (1 Corinthians 6:12-20), while John’s Gospel passage (John 1:43-51) provides another story of listening to a call. There Nathanael is invited to do more than just listen to Jesus the Holy One. He’s asked to "Come and see!".

René Girard, French historian, literary critic, and philosopher of social science, holds that all human culture prevents us from seeing and hearing the true God. It’s only when, by God’s utter gift of grace, Jesus is crucified and raised from the dead and appears to some of his followers, inviting them, calling them, that they and we are released from the power of human culture and begin to experience the the reign of God, i.e., God's culture. Imbued with the Spirit of Jesus, we can finally begin to see clearly how radically different are God's culture and all human cultures, touched as they are by the reality of sin and selfishness.

That hope is grounded in the grace and love of God in Christ which forgives us our very being having been formed in the sin and death of human culture. God's forgiveness invites us to begin to live in God's culture, which, as it transforms and sanctifies each of our beings, can also begin to transform human culture.

Almighty God, whose Son our Savior Jesus Christ

is the light of the world:

Grant that your people, illumined by your Word and Sacraments,

may shine with the radiance of Christ’s glory,

that he may be known, worshiped, and obeyed

to the ends of the earth. Amen.

Baptism In Christ: What It Takes To Be The Beloved

2012-01-08T20:22:00.000-08:00

We’ve just spent two weeks celebrating again the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, the feast of his Holy Name, and his manifestation to all humankind, the Epiphany. It’s a bit dangerous, however, to focus entirely on Jesus, the baby. The remembrance of His birth should cause us to seriously reflect on the life and death of the person whom the baby grew to be. Otherwise, it’s too easy too get caught up, emotionally, in the music, the art, the joy of the wonderful Christ Child and his mother. What should be the beginning of a journey becomes the whole trip. If our joy centers only on a remembrance, it’s likely that we’ve missed the Incarnation’s call and challenge.

Today’s Gospel passage (Mark 1:4-11) is the first event in Jesus’ life which Mark records. Some folks find this story troubling. If the only purpose of John’s baptism was a cleansing from sin, how do we reconcile that with the belief that Jesus was without sin? In Matthew’s interpretation of the event, even John the Baptizer is troubled by Jesus’ request for baptism. “I need to be baptized by you,” he says, “and do you come to me?” Jesus reassures John, saying: “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Both Mark and Matthew subtly allude to a passage found in Chapter 42 of Isaiah: “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him...” Jesus would have been quite familiar with that text. He accepts his calling to be God’s servant, to do justice, to set things right, something that can be accomplished only by his accepting and affirming his relationship with people who are aware that they need to be made right with God.

By being conceived and born of a human mother, Jesus became our brother. In his baptism he now affirms that he’s truly one with us as we are, not as we think we should be. A lyric in the familiar Christmas carol, “O come, all ye faithful”, says “Lo, he abhors not the virgin’s womb.” The more amazing truth is that Jesus abhors not the water of baptism and all that it implies of our need to be cleansed and healed and made right with God.

A Jesus who would have entered the human experience only when it was good and right couldn’t have touched us as we really are. A Jesus who enters our lives without changing us is only “slumming”. What we need and what God has given us in God’s Son, the Beloved, is One who constantly enters our lives at our worst, and yet renews and restores us.

In Jesus, God is revealed as one who is determined to get involved in the messy human enterprise. It leads Jesus at once into temptation and into a ministry of teaching, with some people rejecting his message, and of healing, a ministry with people not always so appreciative of his effort. Eventually it led Jesus to imprisonment and the Cross. Jesus responds to the call of the God whom Isaiah knew. Like the prophet himself, Jesus knows that God involves Godself with real human beings, and that he himself can respond in no other way.

What about us?? Think for a moment about what happens when a child is adopted into a family. If the child is asked: “When were you adopted?” he/she can give a specific day and year. But that isn’t really when adoption happens. Adoption happens when the child takes his or her place in the day-to-day living and relating among the other people in a family: at the point when the child says “I choose these particular people, in this particular context, regardless of their shortcomings and failings, to be my family: my father, mother, brothers and sisters.” Becoming part of a family, in more than just name, is a long, slow, creative process.

Baptism is much like adoption. It happens at a specific time and place on a specific day. Mine was on March 14, 1937, at Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Dayton, OH. My son, Andrew, just celebrated his 36th baptismal anniversary on Friday, the feast of the Epiphany. One of my classmates from seminary did the honors of baptizing him in Alameda in 1975. But somehow, baptism doesn’t, from our viewpoint, “take” until the person baptized deliberately chooses the risk living it. That’s really what the sacrament of Confirmation is all about. In Jesus, God calls each of us as God’s son or daughter. Dare we deliberately risk responding to that call? And to what, exactly, does God call us?

In particular, God calls you and me to live and interact with others. As adopted children of God, we thereby become sisters and brothers of one another. Sometimes that’s a source of immense joy. But if you’ve lived in a family with siblings, you probably know that it isn’t all sharing a plate of fresh cookies on the back porch in the sunshine! A little boy prayed fervently in Sunday school: “Dear God, please bless everybody except Tommy.” The teacher assured the boy that God understood that his little brother was often difficult to live with, but that God loves Tommy very much. “Then he’s a mighty funny kind of God,” said the little boy.

Isaiah, Paul, John the Baptizer, and Jesus all found that God who calls us in Baptism, invites us into relationships involving risk and cost, often with people we’d probably never choose as friends, much less as sisters and brothers! But, then, our God is a funny kind of God, funny enough to love and call each and all of us.

The struggle which you and I experience in living out our baptism isn’t so much in the choosing between good and evil as in choosing between patterns which lead to greater love, acceptance, unity, goodness, and freedom; and patterns which lead us elsewhere. Stealing, for example, is evil. Hardening one’s heart against the poor is evil. Murder is evil; letting people starve to death, wherever they are in the world, is evil. And so is denying anyone the chance to grow; or playing to the worst in others.

Most people can honestly say that they’ve never actually killed a human being. On a scale of virtue, that would be worth a 10. But what about the times we “sink the knife” into someone with a cutting remark or a glare? What of the times we lock people into the prison of our own expectations; or the times we write people off, simply on the basis of some insignificant or selfish standard which we’ve devised? “Dear God, please bless everyone except this person or that person.” Each of us has a “Tommy”.

In calling us into relationship with the Father, Jesus calls us both to be made right ourselves and to become part of God’s desire to call all people, all of life, into right relationship. If we pretend that we’re already in such a good and right relationship with God, that we don’t need healing, we’re really refusing God’s love. People who thought of themselves as holy enough refused John’s offer of baptism -- but not Jesus.

Keeping one’s relationship with God as a private matter, just between God and oneself, isn’t an option. The God of Love can’t and won’t be so confined. If you invite Jesus to dinner, you need to be prepared for him to show up with some of his other friends. And you never know whom he’ll bring: perhaps someone you’ve never gotten to know, perhaps someone “interesting” or sophisticated, “our kind of people”. But then again, he may just bring Tommy!

In baptism you and I are gathered into the Communion of Saints, given to one another, called to live in relationship, because that’s simply the way Jesus extends his love and compassion and grace in the world. We’re each of us God’s “Beloved”, called to be a “light to the nations, to open eyes that are blind”, to release those bound up in darkness and hopelessness. May God, as with Jesus, be “well pleased” with you and me.

The Feast Of Seeking & Finding

2012-01-05T22:02:00.000-08:00

"One of the names given to this feast...is 'The Feast of the Three Kings'. Untheological and unhistorical this cherished name for the feast may be, because the Wise Men at the crib neither constitute the subject matter of the feast, nor were they kings, nor were there, for sure, even three of them; yet the name 'Three Kings' points out a significant aspect of the feast's mystery: that the first people on earth searched everywhere for the child who would redeem them, roving like pilgrims, journeying from afar through every kind of danger. So this day is the feast day of all those who seek God through their life's pilgrimage, the journey of those who find God because they seek God...

...We know very well that God is the goal of our pilgrimage. God dwells in the remote distance. The way to God seems to us all too far and all too hard. And what we ourselves mean when we say 'God' is incomprehensible. The free spirit finds only what it looks for. But God has promised in his word that he lets himself be found by those who seek him. In grace he wills to be not merely the one who is always a little farther beyond every place that the creature on pilgrimage has reached, but rather to be that one who really can be found, eye to eye, heart to heart, by those small creatures with an eternal heart that we call human beings."

(Fr. Karl Rahner, The Eternal Year, 1964)

The Holy Name

2012-01-01T08:52:00.000-08:00

Eternal Father, you gave to your incarnate Son the holy name

of Jesus to be the sign of our salvation.

Plant in every heart, we pray, the love of him who is

the Savior of the world, our Lord Jesus Christ;

who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God,

in glory everlasting. Amen.

Giving Thanks

2011-12-30T22:09:00.000-08:00

As I complete my 14th year as an Oblate of the Order of Julian of Norwich, I rejoice and celebrate with all my OJN sisters and brothers the anniversary of the founding of the Order by Fr. John Julian, OJN, on December 30, 1985. That day The Rt. Rev. W. Bradford T. Hastings, Episcopal Visitor of the Order and Suffragan Bishop of the Diocese of Connecticut, heard the solemn profession of life vows by Fr. John Julian, formerly John Douglas Swanson, and invested him with the staff and medallion of the Guardian of the Order.

Fr. John Julian wrote earlier: "On a personal level, it is the blossoming of a flower whose seed was planted almost an immeasurable age ago. But you will understand that even after what seemed sometimes an interminable wait, it is still fraught with awe and dread. One hears the echo of Mother Julian's words: 'The soul may do no more than seek, suffer, and trust, and this is wrought in the soul...by the Holy Ghost; and the clearness of finding is of his special grace when it is his will."

Those last words resonate and echo, especially today, in the hearts of each of us who is a Member, Oblate or Associate of the Order. We've each been drawn into this common enterprise in many different ways: some determined and direct, some after much procrastinating or doubt, some in complete surprise. But here we find ourselves trying each day to "seek, suffer, and trust", by the nudging of the Spirit, to live our vows of holy poverty, chastity, obedience and prayer. Looking back on fourteen years -- and I know many feel the same as I do -- I'm not sure what I'd have done without the Order and the support of devoted and beloved sisters and brothers. Scott Peck opens his book The Road Less Traveled with the words "Life is difficult." He surely wasn't kidding, and anyone who's tried living by the Spirit knows the depth of those words in spades.

Thanks be to God that Fr. John Julian was attentive to the call, despite many overwhelming odds, and by the Spirit's inspiration provided a means by which so many of us could come to know Mother Julian and drink from the springs of her amazing wisdom. And in the process, we have found ourselves, by God's "courteousness and love", as Julian would put it, growing ever closer to God and to each other, and reaching out with that same courteousness and love to the Church and the world.

Corruptio Optimi Pessima

2011-12-29T10:12:00.000-08:00

One of the Latin phrases which has stuck with me from my seminary days is the one above: "Corruptio optimi pessima" which, roughly translated means, "The corruption of what is best is the worst tragedy". What you see in the photo at the right, brawling Christian Greek and Armenian monks at the shrine of the Nativity in Bethlehem, during the very octave of the Christmas celebration of the birth of the Prince of Peace, is for me the epitome of the saying above. How did it start? It seems that it was because one of the monks sweeping with a broom got just a bit over the "boundary" of the territory of the other group of monks! Then all hell broke loose, as, unfortunately, it has done a number of other times in the past. So great is the traditional antipathy between the two groups of monks, I understand, (and I don't think it's limited to just these two groups) that the keys to the shrine are in the keeping of the Muslims!

"Disedifying" is a polite word that comes to mind for such goings-on. Bad enough that this took place in that particular sacred place and during this particular week. Even more shameful is that it took place only weeks before the annual Week of Prayer for Christian & Interfaith Unity. What in the world were these monks thinking?! As if Christianity these days doesn't have enough bad press! I hardly think that the great monastic abbas and ammas of the desert would look on such actions with anything but scorn and disappointment.

These thoughts were running through my mind as I read the excerpt from the Second Letter of John at Morning Prayer today: "The elder to the elect lady and her children, whom I love in the truth, and not only I but also all who know the truth, because of the truth that abides in us and will be with us forever: Grace, mercy, and peace will be with us from God the Fathr and from Jesus Christ, the Father's Son, in truth and love...But now, dear lady, I ask you not as though I were writing you a new commandment, but one we have had from the beginning, let us love one another. And this is love, that we walk according to his commandments; this is the commandment just as you have heard it from the beginning -- you must walk in it..."

I invite you to join me in praying for these monks, as well as for the whole human family:

Loving God, you created us in your own image

and redeemed us through Jesus your Son:

Look with compassion on the whole human family;

take away the arrogance and hatred which infect our hearts;

break down the walls that separate us;

unite us in bonds of love; and work through our struggle

and confusion to accomplish your purposes on earth;

that, in your good time, all nations and races may serve you

in harmony. Amen.

"This Meddlesome Cleric"

2011-12-29T09:45:00.000-08:00

Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury, preaches in the Cathedral on Christmas Morning, 1170:

“'Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.' The fourteenth verse of the second chapter of the Gospel according to Saint Luke. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

Dear children of God, my sermon this morning will be a very short one. I wish only that you should ponder and meditate the deep meaning and mystery of our masses of Christmas Day. For whenever Mass is said, we re-enact the Passion and Death of Our Lord; and on this Christmas Day we do this in celebration of His Birth. So that at the same moment we rejoice in His coming for the salvation of men, and offer again to God His Body and Blood in sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world. It was in this same night that has just passed, that a multitude of the heavenly host appeared before the shepherds at Bethlehem, saying, 'Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men'; at this same time of all the year that we celebrate at once the Birth of Our Lord and His Passion and Death upon the Cross. Beloved, as the World sees, this is to behave in a strange fashion. For who in the World will both mourn and rejoice at once and for the same reason? For either joy will be overborne by mourning, or mourning will be cast out by joy; so it is only in these our Christian mysteries that we can rejoice and mourn at once for the same reason. 'But think for a while on the meaning of this word 'peace.' Does it seem strange to you that the angels should have announced Peace, when ceaselessly the world has been stricken with War and the fear of War? Does it seem to you that the angelic voices were mistaken, and that the promise was a disappointment and a cheat?

Reflect now, how Our Lord Himself spoke of Peace. He said to His disciples 'My peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you.' Did He mean peace as we think of it: the kingdom of England at peace with its neighbours, the barons at peace with the King, the householder counting over his peaceful gains, the swept hearth, his best wine for a friend at the table, his wife singing to the children? Those men His disciples knew no such things: they went forth to journey afar, to suffer by land and sea, to know torture, imprisonment, disappointment, to suffer death by martyrdom. What then did He mean? If you ask that, remember then that He said also, 'Not as the world gives, give I unto you.' So then, He gave to His disciples peace, but not peace as the world gives.

Consider also one thing of which you have probably never thought. Not only do we at the feast of Christmas celebrate at once Our Lord's Birth and His Death: but on the next day we celebrate the martyrdom of His first martyr, the blessed Stephen. Is it an accident, do you think, that the day of the first martyr follows immediately the day of the Birth of Christ? By no means. Just as we rejoice and mourn at once, in the Birth and in the Passion of Our Lord; so also, in a smaller figure, we both rejoice and mourn in the death of martyrs. We mourn, for the sins of the world that has martyred them; we rejoice, that another soul is numbered among the Saints in Heaven, for the glory of God and for the salvation of men.

Beloved, we do not think of a martyr simply as a good Christian who has been killed because he is a Christian: for that would be solely to mourn. We do not think of him simply as a good Christian who has been elevated to the company of the Saints: for that would be simply to rejoice: and neither our mourning nor our rejoicing is as the world's is. A Christian martyrdom is no accident. Saints are not made by accident. Still less is a Christian martyrdom the effect of a man's will to become a Saint, as a man by willing and contriving may become a ruler of men. Ambition fortifies the will of man to become ruler over other men: it operates with deception, cajolery, and violence, it is the action of impurity upon impurity. Not so in Heaven. A martyr, a saint, is always made by the design of God, for His love of men, to warn them and to lead them, to bring them back to His ways. A martyrdom is never the design of man; for the true martyr is he who has become the instrument of God, who has lost his will in the will of God, not lost it but found it, for he has found freedom in submission to God. The martyr no longer desires anything for himself, not even the glory of martyrdom. So thus as on earth the Church mourns and rejoices at once, in a fashion that the world cannot understand; so in Heaven the Saints are most high, having made themselves most low, seeing themselves not as we see them, but in the light of the Godhead from which they draw their being.

I have spoken to you today, dear children of God, of the martyrs of the past, asking you to remember especially our martyr of Canterbury, the blessed Archbishop Elphege; because it is fitting, on Christ's birth day, to remember what is that Peace which He brought; and because, dear children, I do not think I shall ever preach to you again; and because it is possible that in a short time you may have yet another martyr, and that one perhaps not the last. I would have you keep in your hearts these words that I say, and think of them at another time. In the Name of the Father, and o£ the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”

(From Murder in the Cathedral, Interlude, by T.S. Eliot),

Sadness For the Children

2011-12-28T16:35:00.000-08:00

Today's feast of the Holy Innocents hasn't much lifted my spirits today. Perhaps it's because of this week's news of two particularly brutal incidents: first, the kidnap, murder, and savage dismemberment of a 9 year old girl, and then the tragic fire in Connecticut which claimed the lives of three young daughters and their grandparents. In either case, I can't begin to imagine the depth of the pain, the desolation, the emptiness which has seized the hearts and lives of the families left behind. How does anyone deal with such tragedy? Not a shred of good, for anyone, seems even possible in the face of the two realities. Or, for that matter, in the face of any similar violence and death dealt to children or young ones, whether accidental or deliberate.

Faith tells me otherwise, but what a stretch I'm feeling to accept that! The graphic words of the prophet Isaiah in the first Lesson of Morning Prayer did bring some comfort, probably because of the graphic imagery which Isaiah uses to bring it to a more personal level. "...the Lord has comforted God's people, and will have compassion on God's suffering ones." When the people object to him that God has forsaken them, forgotten them, Isaiah replies: "...Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands..."

It's unknown who all was actually involved in the massacre of the Holy Innocents, reported by Matthew (2:16-18), or how many children were slaughtered. Some estimate it may have been as few as six or as many as twenty. The numbers really don't matter, in a way: neglect, abuse, violence, or the death of a single child or young one is far too costly and is cause for unbridled lamentation. It helps, perhaps, to be reassured that the compassionate, loving God never forgets a child or young one, indelibly imaged in the palms of God's creative hand and in God's heart of love. Nevertheless...

And so we fervently pray on this day: "Receive...into the arms of your mercy all innocent victims; and by your great might frustrate the designs of evil tyrants and establish your rule of justice, love, and peace; through Jesus Christ our Savior..."

Will The Real "Beloved Disciple" Please Stand Up

2011-12-27T11:42:00.000-08:00

St. John the Evangelist (יוחנן Yoḥanan = Yahweh is gracious) lived c. 1 - c. 100 A.D.). John is the conventionally named author of the fourth Gospel. Traditionally he has also been identified with the author of the other Johannine works in the New Testament: three Epistles of John and the Book of Revelation, written by a John of Patmos. He is likewise referred to as John the Apostle and the Beloved Disciple, mentioned in the Gospel. However, at least some of these connections have been highly debated since about 200 A.D.

John's Gospel speaks of an unnamed "Beloved Disciple" of Jesus who bore witness to his message. The editors of the Gospel seem interested in the author's anonymity. Apparently this disciple of Jesus had not been well known, but had greatly outlived Peter.

Surely the apostle John was a historical figure, one of the leaders of the Jerusalem church after Jesus' death. Some scholars believe that he was martyred along with his brother, James (Acts 12:1-2), although many other scholars doubt this. The tradition that John lived to old age in Ephesus seems to have developed in the late 2nd century, although the tradition does appear in the last chapter of the Gospel. By the late 2nd century, the tradition was held by most Christians.

The late Fr. Raymond Brown, S.S., was/is, if not the greatest Johannine biblical scholar, certainly one of the world's top experts on John the Evangelist. His monumental two-volume commentary on the Gospel of John (Volumes 29 and 29A of The Anchor Bible series) is still the standard in biblical study of the fourth Gospel. In his Introduction, Fr. Brown, in the simple, clear style for which he was noted, says this about the person wrote the Gospel of John: "...A distinctive figure in the primitive Church preached and taught about Jesus, using the raw material of a tradition of Jesus' works and words, but shaping this material to a particular theological cast and expression. Eventually he gathered the substance of his preaching and teaching into a Gospel, following the traditional pattern of the baptism, the ministry, and the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Since he continued to preach and teach after the edition of the Gospel, he subsequently made a second edition of his Gospel, adding more material and adapting the Gospel to answer new problems. After his death a disciple made a final redaction of the Gospel, incorporating other material that the evangelist had preached and taught, and even some of the material of the evangelist's co-workers. A theory of two editions and a final redaction by a disciple would not be extraordinary among the theories of the composition of biblical books..."

And so, the final redactor of the Gospel of John could say in conclusion: "...there are many other things that Jesus did. Yet, were they ever to be written down in detail, I doubt that there would be room enough in the whole world for the books to record them." (John 21:25) Fr. Brown's comment, at the end of the second volume of his commentary, is: "...having added another long commentary to the already ample bibliography on the Fourth Gospel, and still feeling that much has been left unsaid, the present writer is not in the least inclined to cavil about the accuracy of the Johannine redactor's plaint that no number of books will exhaust the subject."

Though we may never know exactly who the "Beloved Disciple" was that wrote the Gospel of John, Fr. Brown assures us of one thing: the general message which St. John wanted to convey. "Serving as a preface to the Gospel, the Prologue is a hymn that encapsulates John's view of Christ. A divine being (God's Word [1:1-14], who is also the light [1:5,9] and God's only Son [1:14,18]) comes into the world and becomes flesh. Although rejected by his own, he empowers all who do accept him to become God's children, so that they share in God's fullness -- a gift reflecting God's enduring love that outdoes the loving gift of the Law through Moses..." (An Introduction To The New Testament, ABRL Doubleday, 1997)

Crowned With Love

2011-12-26T17:37:00.000-08:00

Stephanos, in Greek, means crown, wreath. How apt a name for St. Stephen the Deacon, first martyr of the Christian community. Luke the Evangelist tells Stephen's story in Chapters 6:1-8:1 of his Acts of the Apostles, noting his connection with Saul, persecutor of the early Christian community, who later underwent a dramatic conversion and became St. Paul the Apostle. St. Fulgentius (c. 465 - 527 or 533), Bishop of Ruspe in North Africa, also writes beautifully of St. Stephen in one of his sermons:

"...Strengthened by the power of his love, [Stephen] overcame the raging cruelty of Saul and won the persecutor on earth as his companion in heaven. In his tireless love he longed to gain by prayer those whom he could not convert by admonition. Now at last, Paul rejoices with Stephen, with Stephen he delights in the glory of Christ, with Stephen he exalts, with Stephen he reigns...This, surely, is the true life, beloved, a life in which Paul feels no shame because of Stephen's death, and Stephen delights in Paul's companionship, for love fills them both with joy. It was Stephen's love that prevailed over the cruelty of the mob, and it was Paul's love that covered the multitude of his sins; it was love that won for both of them the kingdom of heaven. Love, indeed, is the source of all good things; it is an impregnable defense, and the way that leads to heaven. Whoever walks in love can neither go astray nor be afraid: love guides, protects, and brings the one who loves to the journey's end. Christ made love the stairway that would enable all Christians to climb to heaven. Hold fast to it, therefore, in all sincerity, give one another practical proof of it, and by your progress in it, make your ascent together."

God's Deepest, Most Beautiful Word

2011-12-25T13:48:00.000-08:00

The Nativity, by He Qi

Throughout Advent you and I, who are the Church, have longed and prayed in hope for the coming of Jesus the Holy One. The word for “coming” in Greek, parousía, is a verb form, and refers not so much to the past, as in the birth at Bethlehem, nor to the future, as at the end-times culmination of our world, but rather to the very real on-goingness of God’s coming now, continuously, into our lives through Jesus. That “coming” is God’s promise over and over again in Scripture, and the uniqueness, believability and power of God’s message lies in the fact that what God promised really happened and continues to happen in Jesus. But as we ponder the birth of Jesus and its implications for us, we realize that the hope which this great event brings isn’t just a warm, cuddly kind of hope, as the surrounding culture likes to depict it, but rather a sobering hope.

Back in 1990 I read this little Advent meditation: “Two women who were dressed in their finest were having lunch at a very exclusive restaurant. A friend saw them and came over to their table to greet them. ‘What’s the special occasion?’, she asked. One of the women said, ‘We’re having a birthday party for the baby in our family. He’s 2 years old today.’ ‘But where’s the baby?’, the friend asked. The child’s mother answered, ‘Oh, I dropped him off at my mother’s house. She’s taking care of him until the party’s over. It wouldn’t have been any fun with him along.’ How ridiculous -- a birthday celebration for a child who wasn’t welcome at his own party! Yet, when you stop to think about it, that’s no more foolish than going through the Christmas season, with all of its festivities, without remembering the One whose birth we are supposed to be honoring. And that’s the way many people celebrate Christmas. In all the busyness -- the party-going, gift-shopping, and family gatherings -- the One whose birthday they are commemorating is almost completely forgotten.”

It’s quite interesting to note that none of the readings on today’s Christmas feast mentions the birth event of Jesus in Bethlehem, other than a very general reference in John’s Gospel: “...and the Word became flesh…” Rather, the Epistle passage from the unknown author of the Letter to the Hebrews (1:1-4) seems to act as a bridge between the proclamations of Isaiah in the first reading (52:7-10) and of St. John in the Gospel reading (1:1-14), connecting the profound realities about the Messiah, the Word of God, who was Jesus.

The writer of Hebrews says: “Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days God has spoken to us by a Son...through whom God also created the worlds…” He goes on to describe God’s Son, Jesus, as the icon of God, the mirror-image, pointing to and reflecting “God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very

being…”, a being and existence which you and I share by God’s grace. The passage points back to the prophet Isaiah, in the first reading, who describes the Coming One as the bearer of Good News, as one who comforts God’s people, as one before whom “all the nations”, i.e., all the powers that be in the world: political, governmental, economic, academic, etc., fall silent in awe, respect, and submission.

The writer also looks forward to the Gospel passage, referring to “a Son” about whom God has spoken to us. John the Evangelist, in that magnificent Prologue to his Gospel account of Jesus‘ life, identifies this Son as “the Word...the Word [who] was with God...the Word [who] was God.” John confirms the description of Jesus, God’s Son, given by the writer of Hebrews: “[The Word] was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him...What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people…” Scripture speaks of deep darkness and chaos, both at the beginning of creation in Genesis, and in the world into which Jesus came, the son of poor Jewish working class people. “And the Word became flesh and lived among us [literally, pitched his tent among us]. You could almost say, in today’s terms, it was an “Occupy World” event!

John also refers in the Prologue to Jesus‘ cousin, John the Baptizer, also called The Forerunner, who introduced his cousin to the people among whom Jesus lived and preached. John the Evangelist tells us that the reaction to “the Word”, the “True Light”, was under-whelming, to say the least! “He was in the world, and the world came into being through him,; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.” ...Except for a few people whom Jesus empowered, including us, right down to the present, to become “children [family members] of God.”

You and I continue to be followers of Jesus the Christ, the Messiah, because someone took the time to share him and his saving message with us. We continue to struggle in making sense of “the Word” in our own hearts and in our society. We try our best to learn how to share that Word with those whom we love and respect, and with others in whom we recognize an openness to and a hunger for Jesus‘ saving Word.

So, where’s the Christmas Baby?

The Baby is the One who grew up in a simple Jewish home, the One who ever more deeply, as he grew to be a man, felt the increasing need to reach out to anyone who would listen and speak to them “the Word”, God’s message of Good News, by his life.

The late Fr. Karl Rahner, one of the 20th century’s greatest theologians, writes in his book, The Eternal Year, a most stunning description of what Christmas implies for us as we try follow Jesus. He says: “God has come. He is here in the world. And therefore everything is different from what we imagine it to be. Time is transformed from its eternal flow into an event that with silent, clear resoluteness leads to a definitely determined goal wherein we and the world shall stand before the unveiled face of God. When we say, ‘It is Christmas,‘ we mean that God has spoken into the world his last, his deepest, his most beautiful word in the incarnate Word, a word that can no longer be revoked because it is God’s definitive deed, because it is God himself in the world.

And this word means: I love you, you, the world and humankind. This is a wholly unexpected word, a quite unlikely word. For how can this word be spoken when both humankind and the world are recognized as dreadful, empty abysses? But God knows them better than we. And yet he has spoken this word by being himself born as a creature. The very existence of this incarnate Word of love demands that it shall provide, eye to eye and heart to heart, an almost unbelievable fellowship...between the eternal God and us...

And now there is stillness in the world only for a little while. The busyness that is proudly called universal history, or one’s own life, is only the stratagem of an eternal love that wills to enable us to give a free answer to its final word...In the trembling of my heart that quivers because of God’s love, I should tell God, who as a human person stands beside me in silent expectation, ‘I‘ -- no, rather say nothing to him, but silently give yourself to the love of God that is there because the Son is born.”

O Virgin of Virgins

2011-12-24T13:45:00.000-08:00

Though there were originally seven O Antiphons, this final one is not even found in many of the lists of O Antiphons. According to Benedict D. O’Cinnsealaigh: “[It] appears in both the Gallican (France) and Saerum (England) liturgies. Although it is difficult to establish just when this antiphon was first introduced, it was certainly known in the Middle Ages.” The following text and English translation is from John Mason Neale and Thomas Helmore, eds., Hymnal Noted - Parts I and II, London: Novello, 1856, p. 209:

O Virgo Virginum, quomodo fiet istud?
quia nec primam similem visa es,
nec habere sequentem.
Filiæ Jerusalem, quid me admiramini?
Divinum est mysterium hoc quod cernitis.

O Virgin of Virgins, how shall this be?
For neither before thee was there any like thee,
nor shall there be after.
Daughters of Jerusalem, why marvel ye at me?
The thing that ye behold is a divine mystery.

Below is a prose translation from Cynewulf, The Christ of Cynewulf, trans. Charles Huntington Whitman (Boston: Ginn & Co., 1900):

“O thou joy of women in heavenly glory, fairest of all maidens throughout the regions of earth, so far as ocean-dwellers have ever learned, reveal to us the mystery that came to thee from the skies, how thou didst ever conceive so that a child might be born, and yet hadst not at all carnal intercourse after the manner of men! Of a truth we have never heard that in days of old there came to pass such a thing as thou didst receive by special grace, nor may we look for such an event in time to come. Truly a noble faith dwelt in thee, for thou didst bear within thy womb the Lord of glory, and yet thy splendid virginity was not defiled. All the children of men, as they sow in tears, even thus they reap—they bring forth unto death. Then spake the blessed maiden, the holy Mary, ever full of triumph: 'Why marvel ye thus, why grieve ye and sorrowfully lament, ye sons and daughters of Salem? Ye ask in curiosity how I preserved my virginity, my chastity, and yet became the mother of God's illustrious Son? Verily the secret is not known unto men, but Christ declared that in David's beloved daughter all the guilt of Eve is blotted out, the curse removed, and the weaker sex exalted. Hope hath arisen that a blessing amid the joy of heavenly angels, with the Father of righteousness, may now abide for both men and women evermore through all eternity.”

O Emmanuel

2011-12-23T14:12:00.000-08:00

O Emmanuel, our King and Lawgiver,

the Expected of nations and their Savior:

Come, and save us, O Lord our God!

Emmanuel or Imanu'el (Hebrew עִמָּנוּאֵל "God [is] with us" consists of two Hebrew words: אֵל (’El, meaning 'God') and עִמָּנוּ (ʻImmānū, meaning 'with us').

The Morning Office for this day prays at sunrise: "Behold, all things spoken by the angel of the Virgin Mary are now fulfilled." The Church's liturgy eagerly anticipates the celebration of the Holy One's coming, and concludes by addressing its plea to the Messiah in person: Emmanuel, God with us. Jesus the Christ is one of us: true God and true man. He identifies with all that a human being is: all joys, pleasures and human happiness, as well as all weaknesses, suffering, pain, doubt, insecurity, depression. Even all these centuries later, this reality is still very hard for most Christians to swallow. Somehow there lingers the slight doubt in many of our minds that Jesus is really like us. We nurture that doubt to our own detriment, allowing a distorted image of God with us to distort our vision.

The Holy One is God who reigns in our hearts, in the world, in nature, in the events of history ("our King"). He is the One who sets the guidelines for wise and holy living together ("our Lawgiver"). He is the One for whom the human heart, from the beginning until now, longs and desires. He is Yehoshua, Jesus, the One who saves. The main verse of the chant "O come, O come, Emmanuel" is so descriptive in its plaintive reaching out for God to be with us always as we stand amidst the limitations, indadequacy, and pain of human life as we know it. "O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel, that mourns in lonely exile here until the Son of God appear. Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come, O Israel!"

O King of the Nations

2011-12-22T21:26:00.000-08:00

"O come, Desire of Nations, come, bind
Into one the hearts of all mankind.
Bid Thou our sad divisions cease,
And be Thyself our King of Peace."

Another version puts it this way:

"O King of the Nations and the Desired of all, you are the cornerstone which binds two into one: Come, and save poor humankind whom you fashioned out of clay."

Jeremiah (10:7) refers to "O King of the nations". Isaiah (28:16) also refers to the coming Messiah as a "cornerstone", as does Matthew (21:42). In this sense Jesus the Messiah is like a cornerstone, uniting separate entities, peoples, nations. He is the shalom-maker par excellence: the King of Peace who integrates groups of people and brings wholeness and integration within each person. With him there are no boundary lines, setting any group or person off from another. In the words of St. Paul: "There is no Jew nor Greek; there is neither bond nor free; there is neither male nor female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:29)

O Rising Dawn, Dayspring of the Radiant Light

2011-12-21T20:35:00.000-08:00

An old Benedictus antiphon from the Office for Wednesday in the fourth week of Advent says: "Do not be afraid! Five more days and the Lord will come to you!" Longing...excitement...anticipation! Sound familiar? Perhaps a little like your children as they await Christmas, or those of someone you know? I read similar thoughts today on Facebook from an adult in my own extended family! It seems that the Church, too, can hardly wait for the "Radiant Light" to shine upon us:

O Rising Dawn, Radiance of the Light eternal

and Sun of Justice; come, and enlighten those

who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death!

The approaching Holy One is like the sun, and the Church uses three wonderful metaphors:

+ Christ is the Rising Dawn: Isaiah (9:2) proclaims that "The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness -- on them light has shined...", and in 60:3 notes that "Nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn." Luke shows Zechariah, John the Baptizer's father, proclaiming "And you, child,....will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people...By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace." Christ, the Rising Sun, dispels spiritual darkness and death and disperses light and life. "I am the light of the world", Jesus later proclaimed. We associate the sun and light with warmth, joy, and health. By contrast, we have all known our own overshadowing darknesses: depression, hopelessness, anxiety, aloneness, etc.

+ Christ is the Radiant Light: Jesus the Christ is also the Light eternal, of one substance as the eternal Father. In the Nicene Creed we speak of Jesus as "...the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God..."

+ Christ is the Sun of Justice: The prophet Malachi proclaims (4:2) "...for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings..." Christ is the source of holiness, grace and blessing. What the sun does for nature, Christ does for us who are called into the reign of God. Along with the darknesses and shadows mentioned above, we can also include people who have never heard the message of the Good News of God in Christ, strange as that may seem in today's world of ultra-technology; unbelievers, whether by reasoned choice, or because of faulty and distorted theological education; those who, perhaps, once believed, but who've been so abused and hurt by others or by life's circumstances that they no longer find it possible to set their hearts on the living Christ. If those who cherish the undeserved gift of faith describe the Christ they know with terms like "justice" and "righteousness", then surely they believe in their hearts that Jesus the Holy One will make it "right" for those people in God's time and manner.

The Apostle Who Saw & Believed

2011-12-21T19:26:00.000-08:00

The feast of St. Thomas, Apostle sticks out like a sore thumb in the midst of this season of watching and waiting. We're all used to hearing about Thomas on "Low Sunday", the Sunday after Easter. But notice Jesus' question to Thomas in today's Gospel (John 20:24-29): "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe." Quite a fitting question for all of us to ponder during the waning days of Advent, in which we've heard a lot about glad tidings of things to come, but without mention of anything tangible to see. The Christmas mystery suggests the need for a mature, living faith. How is that effected in us? There are no easy answers. When finally, in four days, we kneel before the One born in Bethlehem the Church will say, in effect, "Here is The One you've been waiting for, the one designated by all the titles we've used in the O Antiphons. Here is the Eternal One, clothed in the human nature which you share."

We celebrate Thomas' feast today on the anniversary of his relics being translated in the 3rd century to Edessa. in northern Mesopotamia. He is said to have missionized India and to have died in Madras, and buried originally in Mailapur. There is obviously little known about his life, other than the few references in the Christian Scriptures. St. Gregory the Great, in one of the Office lessons, attests to Thomas' significance: "Thomas' unbelief has benefited our faith more than the belief of the other disciples; it is because he attained faith through physical touch that we are confirmed in the faith...Indeed, the Lord permitted the apostle to doubt after the resurrection; but he did not abandon him in doubt. By his doubt and by his touching the sacred wounds the apostle became a witness to the truth of the resurrection...Now if Thomas saw and touched the Savior, why did Jesus say: 'Because you have seen me, Thomas, you have believed'? Because he saw something other than what he believed. For no mortal man can see divinity. Thomas saw the Man Christ and acknowledged his divinity with the words: 'My Lord and my God!' Faith, therefore, followed upon seeing."

According to the account given in the Church's Martyrology, Thomas was martyred in India at the king's command. Today he's considered the patron saint of India.

The example of St. Thomas might help us to reflect on the weakness we experience sometimes in approaching faith in our own lives. Is it possible that God uses our "little faith" for greater purposes which we may never understand? Just realizing our inadequacy in this regard is of value in growing in faith. Perhaps all we can do is to continually proclaim the simple acknowlegement of setting our hearts on Jesus the Christ: "My Lord and my God!"

O Key of David

2011-12-20T17:41:00.000-08:00

O Key of David and sceptre of the House of Israel;
you open and no one can shut;
you shut and no one can open:
Come and lead the prisoners from the prison house,
those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.

Isaiah had prophesied: "I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David; he shall open, and no one shall shut; he shall shut, and no one shall open." (Isaiah 22:22) "His authority shall grow continually, and there shall be endless peace for the throne of David and his kingdom. He will establish and uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time onwards and for evermore." (9:7) "...To open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house." (42:7) The theme is also repeated in Revelation 3:7.

"Handing over the keys" is symbolic of the conferral of supreme authority. Though the relevant passages in the Hebrew Scriptures aren't messianic per se, but rather are directed towards a faithful civil ruler who has God's support, St. John borrows the passage from Isaiah 22 and applies it to Jesus. Being in the line of David, "son of David", Christ is the heir and possessor of David's keys, i.e., his kingdom or reign. Jesus the Christ is the chief steward of all the blessings of salvation, and, through the Apostles, entrusts this to the Church, which becomes the vehicle of Christ's grace and forgiveness of sin. The Christ holds the means of releasing us from the darkness and imprisonment of our selfishness and lack of love. In loosing our bonds, we are freed to grow in the love Jesus modeled and share with all the people in his life.

O Root of Jesse

2011-12-19T11:49:00.000-08:00

The Root or Tree of Jesse depicts the ancestors of Christ, shown in a tree which rises from Jesse of Bethlehem, father of King David. Originally, the family tree was a schematic representation of a genealogy. The theme is taken from Isaiah 11:1-9 and Matthew 1:1-16 and Luke 3:23-38, which describes metaphorically the descent of the Messiah, whom Christians believe to be Jesus of Nazareth. The subject is often seen in Christian art, particularly in that of the Medieval period, the earliest example dating from the 11th century.

The passage in Isaiah, 11:1 reads: "A shoot shall come out of the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots..." The Latin Vulgate Bible used in the Middle Ages says: "et egredietur virga de radice Iesse et flos de radice eius ascendet " or ".. a rod shall come forth out of the root of Jesse, and a flower shall rise up...". Flos is Latin for flower. Virga is a green twig, rod or broom, as well as a convenient near-pun with Virgo or Virgin, which undoubtedly influenced the development of the image. Thus Jesus is the Virga Jesse, the shoot of Jesse.

In the New Testament the lineage of Jesus is traced by two of the Gospel writers, Matthew and Luke. Luke describes the generations of Christ, beginning with Jesus himself and tracing backwards through his earthly father Joseph all the way to Adam. Luke notes: "[Jesus] was the son (as was thought) of Joseph..." Matthew's Gospel opens with the words: "An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham." This is Matthew's way of making clear Jesus' whole lineage: He is of God's chosen people, by his descent from Abraham, and he is the "root of Jesse" by his descent from Jesse's son, King David.

Isaiah's prophecy arises from his own realization that Judah and David's kingdom would be destroyed. Yet, there would remain a holy root. From the stump of Jesse, David's father, a shoot would spring forth growing into a sort of banner for all nations. All kings and nations would fall silent and adoring before the Messiah. In fact, David's royal line was dethroned with the Exile and remained forgotten for a long time, Jesse's stump. With Jesus a new branch buds out of the old root and once again David's throne is occupied: "The angel said to [Mary]: '...the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.'" (Luke 1:30; 32-33)

Today's "O" Antiphon notes two aspects of the Messiah's work: 1) his origins will be humble and unimpressive; 2) but his kingdom will encompass the whole earth, drawing everyone into it and placing those of high station and low under his reign. The antiphon pleads: "Come, save us, and do not delay!" How true today the Scriptures still ring: "Why are the nations in an uproar; why do the peoples mutter empty threats? Why do the mighty of the earth rise up in revolt against God and against God's Anointed?..." Millions are unable to recognize the ensign which is Christ as the true Messiah: politicians, dictators, the powerful, the rich. Even we ourselves aren't exempt from frequently failing to recognize the reign of God in Christ in the depths of our own hearts and lives. "Come, O Root of Jesse! You stand for an ensign for humankind. Before you kings shall keep silent, and to you all nations shall have recourse. Come, save us, and do not delay!"

O Adonai - O Lord of Might

2011-12-18T16:33:00.000-08:00

In the Masoretic Text the name YHWH is vowel-pointed as יְהֹוָה. Traditionally in Judaism, the Name is not pronounced but read as Adonai, during prayer, and referred to as HaShem, the Name, at all other times. This is done out of hesitation to pronounce the name in the absence of the Temple in Jerusalem, due to its holiness. This tradition has been cited by most scholars as evidence that the Masoretes vowel-pointed YHWH as they did, to indicate to readers that they are to pronounce Adonai in its place. While the vowel points of אֲדֹנָי (Aḏōnáy) and יְהֹוָה (Yəhōwāh) are very similar, they are not identical.

Adon = steward, administrator, master, or Lord. The addition of ai to adon intensifies and elevates its meaning so that it has the flavor of the ultimate Lord, the Supreme Lord, or Lord of all. In other words, it emphasizes the sovereignty and Lordship of God. That implies, therefore, that we are in relationship to God as servants. Our service is a complete surrender to God who will never ask us to do the impossible, but only what we can accomplish. To God who is Love and who loves us, we are the beloved whom he prepares and equips to serve God and others.

O come, O come, thou Lord of Might,

Who to thy tribes on Sinai's height

In ancient times did give the Law,

In cloud, in majesty and awe.

Rejoice! Rejoice!

Emmanuel shall come to thee

O Israel!

"Here Am I, the Lord's Servant"

2011-12-18T16:06:00.000-08:00

"...Desire and reformation of life are human factors: God's advent through grace is intrinsically divine. Here Mary is the sublime model. She desired the kingdom of God and based her life on the words: 'I am the handmaid of the Lord'...

Her example must be our perpetual goal on earth. We must ever be ready and willing to receive the kingdom of God within ourselves as opportunities present themselves. Baptism was our first Christmas, and every Eucharistic Sacrifice is Christmas repeated. The feasts of the Church's liturgical year are days of grace, days of the kingdom of God. Maintain a calm, reverent, and recollected attitude so as not to disturb God's holy stirrings within you.

Thus let us approach Christmas spiritually."

(Fr. Pius Parsch, The Church's Year of Grace, Vol. 1)

O Wisdom - Knowing How To Live In Wholeness & Holiness

2011-12-17T10:21:00.000-08:00

O Wisdom, You came forth from the mouth of the Most High,
and reaching from beginning to end, You ordered all things
mightily and sweetly.

Come, and teach us the way of prudence!

Wisdom is one of God's key characteristics, as attested to in the sapiential or Wisdom literature of the Hebrew Scriptures. God expresses wisdom in the fact of creating "all things so that they might exist..." (Wisdom 1:14) God's Wisdom is often personified. She is the teacher, "the fashioner of all things, [who] taught me." (Wisdom 7:22). Proceeding from God, begotten by God, the breath of God's power, the effusion of God's glory, Wisdom is the beloved daughter present with God and assisting at creation. Wisdom is described, among many terms, as irresistible, steadfast, free from anxiety, penetrating through all spirits, altogether subtle, more mobile than any motion, a breath of the power of God, a reflection of eternal light, an image of God's goodness.

But Wisdom is also represented as a human attribute, undergirding all virtue. It doesn't so much have to do with knowledge or human prudence. Wisdom is knowing how to live fully, in harmony with God, with one's sisters and brothers, and with one's self. Such wholeness and integration is true holiness.

Today's antiphon honors, in the words of Fr. Pius Parsch, "the New Testament Creator of the invisible spiritual world rather than the Maker of the visible, material universe about us. Creation, with its glorious order, power and beauty, is but a faint type of the new creation established by Christ. In His Church and in the soul 'He reaches from beginning to end'; He is and remains in this universe till the end of time. How well 'He orders all things mightily and sweetly'!" (The Church's Year of Grace, Vol. 1)

All this is part of our yearning cry: "O Wisdom...Come, teach us the way of prudence!"

The "O" Antiphons: December 17-23

2011-12-16T20:46:00.000-08:00

The "O" Antiphons are antiphons used to introduce the Magnificat canticle at Vespers on the last seven days of Advent.

Each antiphon is a name of Christ, one of his attributes mentioned in Scripture:

December 17: O Sapientia (O Wisdom)
December 18: O Adonai (O Lord)
December 19: O Radix Jesse (O Root of Jesse)
December 20: O Clavis David (O Key of David)
December 21: O Oriens (O Dayspring)
December 22: O Rex Gentium (O King of the nations)
December 23: O Emmanuel (O God is with Us)

In the Roman Catholic tradition, the "O" Antiphons are sung or recited at Vespers from December 17 through December 23.
They have been traditionally used in the Church of England at Evening Prayer during this period, though not printed in the Book of Common Prayer. More recently they have found a place in primary liturgical documents throughout the Anglican Communion, including The Episcopal Church. The "O" Antiphons also occur in many Lutheran churches. In the Book of Common Worship published by the Presbyterian Church (USA), the antiphons can be read as a praise litany at Morning or Evening Prayer.

The hymn O come, O come, Emmanuel, or Veni Emmanuel, is a lyrical paraphrase of these antiphons. The first letters of the titles taken backwards form a Latin acrostic: "Ero cras" which translates to "Tomorrow, I will come", mirroring the theme of the antiphons.

The exact origin of the "O" Antiphons is unknown. Boethius (480–524/5) made some reference to them, thus suggesting their presence in his time. At the Benedictine Abbey of Saint Benedict at Fleury, now Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire, these antiphons were recited by the abbot and the other monks in descending rank, after which a gift was given to each member of the community. By the 8th century they were used in the liturgical celebrations in Rome. Usage of the antiphons was so prevalent in monasteries that the phrases "Keep your 'O'" and "The Great O Antiphons" were common parlance. One may conclude from this that the "O" Antiphons have probably been part of Western liturgical tradition since the very early Church.

The Benedictine monks arranged these antiphons purposefully. If one starts with the last title and takes the first letter of each one — Emmanuel, Rex, Oriens, Clavis, Radix, Adonai, Sapientia—the Latin words ero cras are formed, meaning, "Tomorrow, I will come." This was interpreted as a message to Christians from Jesus, whose coming they prepare for in Advent and whom they have addressed in these seven Messianic titles: "Tomorrow, I will come." Thus the "O" Antiphons not only bring an intensity to Christians' Advent preparation, but are a fitting and joyful conclusion to the season of Advent.

Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe

2011-12-12T00:01:00.000-08:00

Dios del poder y la misericordia, bendijo las Américas en Tepeyac

con la presencia de la Virgen María de Guadalupe.

Pueda su ayuda de oraciones que todos los hombres y las mujeres

para aceptar uno al otro como hermanos y hermanas.

Por su presente de la justicia en los corazones

puede su reinado de la paz en el mundo.

Preguntamos esto por nuestro Señor Jesucristo, su Hijo. Amén.

We Are Glad Indeed!

2011-12-11T16:42:00.000-08:00

Gaudete Sunday, as this third Sunday in Advent is called, was designed by the early Church as a “breather” during the four weeks before Christmas. Though this period had a mildly penitential character early on, that idea has been somewhat modified over the centuries. The Church chose texts for this Sunday pointing to the joy of anticipation of Jesus’ coming, and changed the penitential purple or violet vestments to rose-colored ones.

The Scriptures today summon each of us to joy. Psalm 126 sets the tone: “The Lord has done great things for us, and we are glad indeed...Those who go out weeping, carrying the seed, will come again with joy, shouldering their sheaves.” Paul (1 Thessalonians 5:16-24) puts an exclamation mark to that by shouting: “Rejoice always!...” But what does it mean to truly rejoice? That’s not always easily answered in this often hassled and harried time of the Christmas holiday season when we sing a lot about joy, while many people, particularly this year, face staggering depths of anxiety and depression.

The joy to which the Scriptures refer isn’t the same as pleasure or satiation, nor even the emotional high which we call happiness. This kind of joy is the steady assurance that our life’s inconsistencies and incongruities can and will be resolved: an assurance that what has already happened and is about to happen enables you and me to sort out life’s conditions. This kind of joy isn’t delight in possessing something, but delight in the intense reality of being oned with God and of sharing God’s love with one another.

I think it can be safely said that our society today can’t be characterized as a joyful society. You can figure that out simply by observing people during this season, in the pushing and shoving of the shopping malls or in any other place where people’s guards are down. There are a lot of bored, distracted, tired people wandering around the malls and streets: certainly not a good advertisement for joy.

You and I, as a community of faith, though we live as a minority in a primarily joyless culture, are invited to participate in the scandalous, subversive activity of joy. We’re authorized to do what the society around us is unable or unwilling to do in its sorry weariness. Genuine Christian joy undermines frantic activity. It shakes us free from a world that controls us in keeping us constantly fatigued and joyless. The basis of this alternative activity of rejoicing is the conviction that something special, not yet widely known and/or acknowledged in the world, has been and is being disclosed to us through God’s graciousness. The good news of God’s Word in Jesus to us, a community of hurt and hope, is that the Promised One has come and is coming: to transform us and our world from the bottom up. “...He will do it,” says Paul!

Scripture articulates this promised change in concrete terms, proclaiming that a “new heavens and a new earth” will be created; that rejoicing will prevail over weeping and distress; that people’s need will be met; that things will endure; that people’s efforts will bear fruit, not frustration; that they won’t fear violence, for there’ll be harmony and peace. In a passage which Jesus himself used in the synagogue in Nazareth, Isaiah’s words today (Isaiah 61:1-4; 8-11) speak of healing for those crushed or oppressed or despairing; of the cancelling of debts; and of release for prisoners: of general amnesty for all. He foresees a total transformation, a newness over which all will rejoice. Such change and transformation, Scripture says, is the work of “the Spirit of the Lord” who initiates the moves leading to comfort, to resoration, to righteousness, to rejoicing. It’s the Spirit who brings newness to all those places where everything is hopeless.

Paul is clear in his direction to the Thessalonian Christians: “Do not quench the Spirit.” This becomes more understandable as you look throughout the whole epistle where the Holy Spirit is seen as the power forming and continuing to transform God’s people. The Spirit has made the Thessalonian church exceptional and noteworthy in the midst of a world which is dispirited. Paul, therefore, advises them (and us) not to resist or squelch the Spirit in the times of our challenges and suffering. It’s this “Force”, this resilient free power of God the Holy Spirit who will work an utter newness in us and in a world so closed to God’s breaking through. As in Genesis, the Spirit blows upon darkness and chaos to make a new creation. This same holy Spirit now comes to blow upon our hearts and to usher in a new world, a new creation, in us. This Spirit speaks of newness from God, a newness not at all derived from anything presently available in the world.

In Advent, you and I wait each day for this transforming Spirit whom we, in the tired, bored, joyless, and closed corners of our hearts, finally won’t be able to resist. The decisive change wrought by God’s Spirit isn’t done in some nebulous heaven. The Holy Spirit works, here and now, up close and personal, through an identifiable, historical agent: Jesus of Nazareth, confessed to be the Lord who comes.

There’s a remarkable famous painting of the Crucifixion by Matthias Grunewald in the Museum of Unterlinden in Colmar, Germany. It has a fascinating history, both as to its creation and to its preservation during World War II. The particular thing I want to point out, though, is the figure of John the Baptizer on the right hand side, poised in a dramatic gesture, pointing his ascetic, bony finger directly at the figure of the suffering Jesus.

I see that as a sort of icon of what John the Baptizer does in John’s Gospel (John 1:6-8; 19-28) as he identifies Jesus, for the Jerusalem leaders, as “the One whom you do not know.” The question which we usually focus on (and preach on) in this Gospel is “Who are you?”, asked twice of John the Baptizer. The leaders of Jerusalem want to find a label for John, to categorize him. If they name him, they can dismiss him. But John refuses to play their game. Deeply aware that “He [Jesus] must increase, but I must decrease”, John, in essence, tells the leaders (and us) that we’re asking the entirely wrong question. The real question for them and for us is: “Who is Jesus?”, and John’s gesture in the Grunewald painting eloquently reminds us of the answer. Jesus is the One who has come and given everything he has for us, in love. The One who, in dying, sets loose the Spirit of God on us and on the world. The One who calls us, invites us, to show that same kind of giving love to one another. The One who will, in the end, draw us all into the completeness of God’s being, which is love.

These last two weeks of the season of Advent might be thought of as the gracious gift of the Spirit of having not only our hopes and expectations, but even the questions which nag us, reframed and reformed. The Christ is the One among us whom we don’t know, an unseen, unknown Power which disturbs our sense of control and predictability. He, the Powerful One, won’t fit into the neat boxes that we’ve built for him. He’s always beyond our comprehension. We can’t label what God in Christ is doing in our joyless lives so that they can be safely contained, so that we don’t actually have to repent. The One whom we do not know is already among us through His Spirit, meeting us, inviting us to be one with Him. He calls us to share John the Baptizer’s role of pointing to the Christ who is the source of our true joy, to embrace the Christ in one another, our neighbor: in compassion, in justice, in love, and, above all, in joy.

John Damascene: The Golden Speaker (c. 645-749)

2011-12-09T11:40:00.000-08:00

St. John of Damascus (Arabic: يوحنا الدمشقي Yuḥannā Al Demashqi was a Syrian monk and priest, born and raised in Damascus, then under Muslim rule. Before he was ordained, he served as a Chief of Revenue [tax collector!], and as chief logothéte = representative of the local Christians, to the Muslim Caliph of Damascus, as his father had done.

John was an extremely knowledgeable, versatile thinker and writer whose fields of interest and contributions included law, theology, philosophy, and music. He wrote expositions of the Christian faith, and composed hymns, including several Easter hymns, still in everyday use in Eastern Christian monasteries throughout the world, as well as in the Western Church.

John Damascene is considered "the last of the Fathers" of the Eastern Orthodox church and is best known for his strong defense of icons, especially during the times of the 8th century Iconoclast controversy, perpetrated by Byzantine Emperor Leo III, the Isaurian's, edict forbidding and ordering the destruction of icons and holy images. John wrote three "apologies" [treatises] against the Iconoclasts [breakers of images] and in defense of holy images.

In the Preface of his work, The Fount of Knowledge/Wisdom, St. John addresses the Bishop of Maiuma, Cosmas, and humbly professes his inadequacy and unworthiness for taking on the bishop's task for him to write the book. Nevertheless, he proclaims: "On the other hand, however, the fruit of disobedience is death, while the humble and obedient man, because he has shown himself to be an imitator of Christ, is led from the lowest place to the highest. He receives from God the grace that illuminates, so that in the opening of his mouth he is filled with the Spirit. He becomes purified in heart and enlightened in understanding. When he opens his mouth, he receives the power of speech and has no concern as to what he shall say, because he is an instrument of the Spirit speaking within him. Therefore, in obedience through you to the Christ who in you exercises the pontifical office, I bow to your request and open my mouth, being confident that through your prayers it will be filled with the Spirit and that I, taking so much as He shall give and speaking this aloud, shall utter eloquently the fruit not of my own understanding but of the Spirit who gives wisdom to the blind." What an eloquent reminder to any of us to whom falls the task of preaching or teaching the Good News of God in Christ!

St. John of Damascus died at the age of 74 at his monastery, Mar Saba, near Jerusalem.

Dec. 8 - Feast of the Conception of Mary, the Theotokos [God-bearer]

2011-12-07T18:46:00.000-08:00

On this day we celebrate the feast of the conception of the Virgin Mary by her parents Joachim and Anna. This major festival finds its place in the Church's preparation for Christmas. Christians rejoice in the event by which Mary is conceived in fulfillment of her parents' prayers in order to be formed in the womb, born on the earth, dedicated to the Lord, and nurtured in holiness to become by God's grace the mother of God's Son, Jesus, the Anointed One.

The Roman Catholic Church refers to this feast as the "Immaculate Conception", to affirm that Mary was immaculately conceived in the womb, free of original sin. The Orthodox and Episcopal Church traditions espouse the theology of some ancient theologians who teach that all human beings -- including the Virgin Mary, a human like the rest of us, unlike Jesus who is not only truly human but is also the incarnate Son and Word of God -- are born into a fallen, death-bound, demon-riddled world whose "form is passing away" (1 Corinthians 7:31). We are all born mortal and tending toward sin. Yet, according to this view, humans aren't born guilty of any personal sin, certainly not one allegedly committed "in Adam." Nor are we born "stained" because of the manner in which we're conceived by the sexual union of our parents. Otherwise, if sexual union in marriage is in any sense sinful, or the cause per se of any "stain" of sin, then, as the great Eastern Father St. John Chrysostom has taught, God would be the sinner because God created us this way, male and female, from the beginning.

"Mary is conceived by her parents as we are all conceived. But in her case it is a pure act of faith and love, in obedience to God's will, as an answer to prayer. In this sense her conception is truly "immaculate." And its fruit is woman who remains forever the most pure Virgin and Mother of God."

Come, let us dance in the spirit!

Let us sing worthy praises to Christ!

Let us celebrate the joy of Joachim and Anna,

The conception of the Mother of our God,

For she is the fruit of the grace of God.

An Advent Fantasy

2011-12-04T15:52:00.000-08:00

This morning I joined friends at St. George's Chapel at Bishop's Ranch in Healdsburg to share the Advent 2 Eucharist, and it was a wonderfully peaceful experience. I feel that I simply must share in this blog some of the items in the service bulletin. First, from the blessing of the second candle on the Advent wreath: "We light our second candle as a prayer of hope and longing, that God's glory may be revealed on earth, through justice, peace and faithful love. Living God, come to our world. Help us to recognize your presence wherever people speak truth, make peace and show kindness. Amen.
I was feeling a deep sense of "hope and longing", especially when the congregation responded to the Celebrant's call to worship:
"Come and listen, come and sing, come and tell, come and worship. Amen."

The Worship Notes in the back of the bulletin gave a lovely commentary on the two readings, 2 Peter 3:8-15a and Mark 1:1-8: "Our first reading is from 2 Peter, which is quite likely the last of the New Testament books to be written. Some scholars think it was penned in the second century, perhaps a generation after the other writings. Almost everyone thinks it was written, not by Peter, but by someone else who in the custom of the time attributed it to Peter as a way of honoring him. It is written in the literary form of a "Testament," a type of literature of the time that was composed as though it were the dying words of a famous person. A Testament was in a sense another way to honor that person. It offered the person's main teachings and often offered advice on how to cope with impending circumstances after his death. In any case, this letter is full of warnings about false teachers and the ways to counter them. In keeping with the themes of Advent, when we await the coming of Christ (in history, in our own day, and at the end times) this passage depicts the end times and urges folks to take hold of the present moment and live it in peace. (Probably sound advice, whether issued from a death bed or not).

Our second lesson is the beginning of the Gospel of Mark and sets the theme of the whole gospel: 'the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.' That news begins to unfold with the preaching of John the Baptist, Jesus' cousin and one of the great figures of the New Testament. A man accustomed to the wilderness, John worked to prepare the way for the One who 'is coming' by preaching and baptizing folks for the repentance of their sins. He was a locavore, but definitely not a vegan."

Any number of things in the readings jumped out at me: "...do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day. The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish..." "...what sort of people ought you to be in leading lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God..." [what, exactly, is that all about?] The first lines of Mark's Gospel then erupt with: "The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God..." John the Baptizer, to whom I've had great personal devotion since my seminary days long ago, steps forward with a challenge: "Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight..." Mark presents us with an ascetic, roughly clad, locust-and-wild honey-eating prophet, foretelling with great humility and simplicity the imminent arrival of the Holy One, who will plunge us [baptizo = make whelmed or fully wet; dip] into water as well as Holy Spirit.

As I was driving up Hwy. 101 to The Bishop's Ranch this morning, I spotted several air balloons on the west side, suspended peacefully, quietly aloft. I was trying to imagine the feelings of hope, expectation, anticipation I'd experience if I knew that Jesus the Holy One was on one of those air balloons, conceivably with John the Baptizer in the background at the helm, guiding it gently as it descended, and that I was to have five minutes with Jesus after he landed. What would I say? I think that I'd first welcome Jesus and say how happy and honored I was to be given five minutes of time with him. I'd also greet John the Baptizer who'd probably nod politely as he was tying up the ropes, etc., and surreptiously I'd slip him a small box of prime locusts and ants -- chocolate covered, of course -- after which he might flash a small, knowing smile!

As Jesus and I walked about the landing site I'm sure we'd discuss the state of the world and people's fears and insecurity at this point in time: about problems in the Middle East, about the famine in Africa, about the current upheaval across Europe. Certainly the present state of the United States, with so much uncertainty, joblessness, homelessness, hunger, foreclosures, the sufferings of poor people, the aging, of those with disabilities and mental illness, of the victims of violence and of being taken advantage of, would all come up. But, at the same time, I think I'd let Jesus know how grateful I am for this earth and world, despite how we've abused it; for the never-ending wonder of nature and its cycles, for lush plant and wild life, for the beauty all around us. I'd thank him, too, for the unanticipated wonders of people: the many quiet or hidden acts of kindness and caring; the devotion and dedication of so many parents, men and women in the military, police and fire staff, and medical teams; the freshness, vigor and promise of children and young people; the grace and shared wisdom of senior citizens.

I'd thank him also for the family into which I was born and for each person in it, regardless of how quirky, ornery or unpredictable any of us are! For my daughter who texted me words of "Happy Thanksgiving" recently. For my son who continues to struggle, amid signs of slow progress, with his physical and psychological demons. For my sisters and brothers as they struggle to raise their families in wholesome ways, often against great odds. And I would thank Jesus for communities like the one which meets at St. George's Chapel each Sunday, people who "speak truth, make peace and show kindness", and allow one another to be vulnerable and yet safe, to experience mercy and compassion, and to be inspired to genuine hope and to the desire to go forth and share that hope with others.

Well, Jesus and John didn't actually descend this morning and step off of one of those balloons, sad to say. What I've related above may be a "fantasy", but it was too deeply felt not to be real in essence. Perhaps my feelings on this 2nd Sunday of Advent could best be summarized in the words of the prayer this morning after the Prayers of the People: "God our Sovereign, you are always coming into the world. Come to us now, soon, and forever, and let us receive you as the Child of holiness and the Wind of change, through whom, this day, we pray. AMEN"

Blessed Nicholas Ferrar (1592-1637): Deacon & Founder of the Little Gidding Community

2011-12-01T10:11:00.000-08:00

The inspiration for the Little Gidding Community, as well as its modern expression: the Community of Christ the Sower, came from two remarkable 17th century Christians: Nicholas Ferrar and George Herbert. In 1626 Ferrar, having been educated at Clare Hall, now Clare College, Cambridge, and having made his way in the world as a successful businessman and politician, established a Christian community at Little Gidding, a deserted hamlet in the Huntingdonshire Wolds. The community was based on his own extended family, his mother and elder brother and sister with their respective families forming the core. The old manor house and church were restored, and the community followed a simple pattern of daily worship, labor and fellowship.

George Herbert, renowned British priest-poet and hymn writer, was a contemporary and close friend of Nicholas Ferrar and supported and advised him in the Little Gidding community experiment. Herbert himself had been an ambitious politician and became prebend of Leighton Bromswold, a parish located five miles south of Little Gidding. There Herbert sought to initiate a similar pattern of living and worship within his own vicarage and parish church.

Ferrar and Herbert were deeply convinced that all Christians, whatever their station in life or personal circumstances, were called to a life a regular corporate prayer and intimate spiritual fellowship -- not just monks, nuns and priests. In this they were responding to a vision central to the English Reformation. The simple pattern of daily worship followed the Book of Common Prayer's Morning and Evening Prayer, as condensed and reworked by Thomas Cranmer and his colleagues from the old monastic offices. Both Ferrar and Herbert, in their own individual familial and parish contexts, tried to express this vision in practice: the same vision which later brought into reality the Community of Christ the Sower.

In 1977 a charitable trust bought the old Little Gidding farmhouse, next to the chapel used by the community, and began to build houses around the old farm courtyard. Presently, a group of about 25 people live there, working a small farm and running various workshops and research projects. Other Community members live either in nearby villages or scattered across the country. In 1986 the old manor house at Leighton Bromswold, next to the church, became a community guest house. Originally built by the Duchess of Lennox, George Herbert's patron and supporter, it housed guests who came to visit the Ferrars.

Today the basis of the Community's life is a short service of daily prayer and a simple weekly Communion service, usually held on Saturday evening, sometimes in mid-week. This enables members to still participate in their own parish churches. As many members as are able at Little Gidding and Leighton Bromswold gather for morning prayer. The service is simply designed so that those who work or have young children can easily pray it on their own. In addition, the members meet together each week in groups to share an agape meal. There are also four special yearly services, marking different aspects of the community's life, for which all the members try to come together.

We can catch a glimpse of the simplicity of the Little Gidding Community's prayer life in their Prayer Book's Daily Prayer:

PRAISING
President: With one voice we give praise to God
People: To him be eternal glory.
Psalm from the Old Testament
Psalm from the New Testament

LISTENING
President: We proclaim the good news of God.
People: May his word dwell in our hearts.
Reading from the Old Testament
Reading from the New Testament
Time of silence

PRAYING
President: Lord teach us to pray.
The Lord's Prayer
Free prayer
Collect for the week

BLESSING
President: Let us seek to follow the way of Christ in all we do.
People: May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all. Amen.

St. Andrew: The Background Apostle

2011-11-30T10:36:00.000-08:00

Some have speculated that Andrew could've been a middle child. His high-powered older brother, St. Peter, certainly over-shadowed him. Interestingly, it was Andrew who introduced Peter to Jesus, resulting in Peter's following the Master and eventually becoming head honcho among the close followers. Both the young men were fishermen by trade. It seems that Andrew was a disciple of John the Baptizer before being called into Jesus' inner circle. Andrew seems to have always been working the background: telling Jesus about the boy with the loaves and fishes which Jesus used in feeding five thousand people; announcing to Jesus the arrival of some Greek visitors who wanted an audience.

Legend has it that Andrew later ministered among the Scythians, ancient inhabitants of what we now know as Russia. Not surprisingly, Andrew has long been a patron of Russia, as well as of Scotland, probably because his relics were brought there in the 8th century. The Scottish flag features an X-shaped cross, called a saltire cross, associated with St. Andrew who is said to have been martyred on such a cross. The Brotherhood of St. Andrew, an informal fellowship of adult and young men, has been a long-standing organization in the Episcopal Church, as well as in parishes of our Diocese.

It’s fitting that St. Andrew’s feast should coincide with the beginning of Advent, for Andrew’s life and the Scriptures for his feast have a message for us about this season of waiting and watching. Advent speaks to us about the end of what we know as “the world”, how it will be brought about by God alone and in God’s time alone. In the meantime you and I wait, watch and are alert to any sign of the coming reign of God, primarily by letting ourselves be steeped in that Word which both the writer of Deuteronomy (30:11-14) and St. Paul (Romans 10:8b-18) mention. “...the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe.” Paul tells us that this Word is “the word of faith that we proclaim”, but it’s not just a verbal communication. It’s more of a confession or profession of what one holds in the deepest place in one’s heart. St. Peter verbalized it in Matthew’s narrative (16:16): “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” He and the other Apostles, including Andrew, lived and ministered from that conviction.

Waiting for the coming reign of God, as Andrew and the others came to realize, isn’t a business-as-usual festival of things which we now know and possess, or perhaps seek to possess under the

Christmas tree! Jesus the Chosen One for whom we wait isn’t just a gentle baby who comes to fit into our preconceived world, but rather the mighty Son of Man who breaks into our hurting and hopeful humanity. Writer Larry Parton says: “The one we wait for is the one who will get in our way. He is the one who will disturb us and our peace. He is the one who will stop cooing and begin to talk about things that will trouble us.” Our immersion in the Word during Advent reminds us that his in-breaking is a two-edged sword. On the one hand, there’s a shattering of our this-worldly settledness and our comfortable assumptions that we can buy our way to whatever we want. But there’s also a liberation, a setting-free, by shattering the narrowness that restricts us, the selfishness that binds us and others, and the paralysis and apathy which shuts us down.

These may be hard words for us who so readily claim to rely on God, but whose actions so often imply that we’re really in charge. The temptation for all of us is to think of God as a “Sugar Daddy” who presides over a predictable world in order to keep it user-friendly and benign for us. We’d really like to believe that, if we only work at it in clever ways, perhaps we can have the world, and our family, and our job, and our Church on our terms. “Well,” writes theologian Walter Bruggemann, “that is conventional. But it is not biblical, not Christian, not news.”

The Word which guided Andrew’s life came from the very lips of Jesus, the One who mirrored what he said by how he lived: by the way he treated others. Andrew learned how difficult it was to do that, because, as Jesus, Andrew came to experience opposition and suffering, and even death, which goes along with it. Yet, he never forgot that the Word, Jesus, was always near him: on his lips and in his heart. He waited for God’s reign in hope.

The following words, from a sermon by Mark Frank, included in the English book Celebrating the Saints (p. 453), touched me deeply when I first read them some years ago, and I share them with you for reflection on this feast day and for the season of Advent: "...alas, what have we, the best, the richest of us as highly as we think of ourselves and ours, more than Andrew and his brother: a few old broken nets? What are all our honours but old nets to catch the breath of the world! What are our estates but nets to entangle us? What are all our ways and devises of thriving but so many several nets to catch a little yellow sand and mud? What are all those fine catching ways of eloquence, knowledge, good parts of mind and body, but so many nets and snares to catch others with?...And our life itself, what is it but a few rotten threads knit together into veins and sinews, its construction so fragile that the least stick or stone can unloose it or break all to pieces.

O blessed saint of this day, that we could but leave these nets as thou didst thine: that nothing might any longer entangle us or keep us from our Master's service! Follow we St. Andrew as he did Christ, follow him to Christ, cheerfully and without delay, and while it is today, begin our course. Cast off the networks, the catching desires of the flesh and the world, and so you also may be said to have left your nets. And having so weaned your souls from inordinate affection to things below, let Christ be your business, his life your pattern, his commands your law..."

Heroine Of the 99%

2011-11-29T16:34:00.000-08:00

Blessed Dorothy Day died in her room at Maryhouse on November 29, 1980. She was surely one of the Church's greatest advocates for the 99%: ordinary middle-class people and families; the poor; the hungry; the anawim of society, as Scripture calls them -- those easily written-off human beings on the fringes of society.

About 8 months before she died, Dorothy wrote this in her Diary:
"'The less you have of Caesar the less you have to render to Caesar.' Jesus and the coin.
'Render to Caesar the things which are Caesar's and to God the things of God.' 'Whose face on this coin?' Jesus.
Foundation of our work.
Voluntary poverty and manual labor. Jesus and the coin. 'Do unto others.'
'Sowing and reaping.' New Testament words of Jesus. 'Sow sparingly and you will reap sparingly.'"

She and Peter Maurin began The Catholic Worker newspaper, which soon became a powerful movement and continues to this day, though not as publicly and forcefully as it did in Dorothy's heyday. The "Caesars" of the world, including the Catholic Church of which she was a loyal and devoted member, were made terribly uncomfortable by this simple, and by her own admission, somewhat mouthy woman who never backed down on her commitment to serving the needy and promoting non-violence and peace. She herself lived an amazing life of poverty among those she served, grappling not only with all the day-to-day problems of those she took in, but with the struggles within her own family and friends, with the on-going ups and downs of the Catholic Worker movement, and with her own admitted shortcomings and failings.

One can get an intimate feel for what she went through in a 2008 book, The Duty of Delight: The Diaries of Dorothy Day, edited by Robert Ellsberg. Reading her entries, you almost feel as if you're sitting beside her, hearing her recount her daily joys and sorrows. Ellsberg records a prayer, St. Ephraim's Prayer of Penance, found inserted in her final journal: "O Lord and master of my life, take from me the spirit of sloth, faintheartedness, lust of power and idle talk. But give to thy servant rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience and love. Yea, O Lord and King, grant me to see my own errors and not to judge my brother, for Thou art blessed from all ages to ages. Amen." Ellsberg closes his book, saying that he found the prayer a few years ago in a book by Russian poet Sergey Mitrofanovich Gorodetzky (1884-1967), The Humiliated Christ in Russian Thought. "It was the prayer of a political prisoner in the Czar's time. Also in the book was the story of a pious peasant or serf, a girl who loved dancing. An accident crippled her for life so she lay, a helpless invalid, but 'rejoicing that she was counted worthy to suffer for our Lord.'"

It recalls to my mind the exquisite mural in St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church, San Francisco, of dancing "celebrities" of faith. I can't think of a more appropriate image for Blessed Dorothy Day, an ordinary woman who suffered much for the Lord, but who now dances among the Communion of the Saints.

The Advent Community of Hurt & Hope

2011-11-27T14:29:00.000-08:00

An anonymous poet has written:

I saw the sign on the highway

‘Prepare to meet thy God.’

But when I got a little closer

There were no further instructions.

Advent is a season like that: one where we prepare, we wait, we discern what the “further instructions” are!

Contrary to the dominant and prevailing view in our American culture, however, Advent doesn’t begin with unbridled celebration or a shopping spree! Rather, Advent deals with a community of hurt, with you and me, real people who know pain, depression, inadequacy and failure, particularly at this time in our country. We’re people who articulate our hurt and aren’t afraid to let it show. Such a community of hurt knows the One to Whom it speaks in prayer of its suffering. We call upon God, the Lord of hurt, whom we trust to bring our suffering to an end.

Since our hope and prayer is directed to the One whose reign is never really in doubt, our community of hurt is also ultimately a community of hope. We passionately hope for the end of our troubles. Our living faith assures us that God reign will eventually come. The hope which we express isn’t wishful thinking, but a concrete hope: as real as the pain we feel. Hurt and hope go together in our lives, even though you and I don’t like to accept that reality. We’d like to think that, somehow, we can have the one (guess which?) without the other. Yet it’s precisely the reality of our present hurt which motivates us to have hope.

The first reading (Isaiah 64:1-9) pictures a waiting community of Israel as a child abandoned, but not orphaned: in desolate loneliness and disarray, yet still able to hope in One who will set things right. The author of the passage is undoubtedly that anonymous inspired prophet, referred to by scholars as Second Isaiah. He addresses a hurt people who’ve been in exile in Babylon for nearly 50 years. They’re unaware that in another 10 years Cyrus the Persian will vanquish Nabonídus and his son, Belshazzar. And that will make it possible for the Jewish exiles to return to their beloved, devastated land and, subsequently, to rebuild their sacred Temple. But the only immediate thing they have to hold onto is the memory, the hope, of God their Father: “...For You are our Father. Were Abraham not to know us, nor Israel to acknowledge us, You, Lord, are our Father…” (Isaiah 63:16) “...no ear has ever heard, no eye ever seen any God but You, doing such works for those who wait for God…” (64:4) These are Advent’s parameters: whatever it is that bothers or plagues us, you and I begin and end knowing whose we are. That is our Christian hope.

Second Isaiah explores what it means to look to an ever-present, though hidden, God in the midst of suffering. He accuses God of misleading and of abandoning sometimes. He begs God to come back. He calls to mind God’s previous interventions and, in doing so, reminds us of our lives and the times when God takes each of us, individually and as a community, by surprise, and shatters our expectations. Advent teaches us to wait for another future coming like that. It gives us focus at those times when, because of the weighing-down burden of our selfishness and weakness, we feel unclean, like a dirty garment, or blown about and abandoned, as a faded autumn leaf.

Yet, says the prophet, “Yet, O Lord, you are our Father...you are our potter...we are the clay...we are all the work of your hand!” The basis of Advent is a “yet” which contradicts what we see around us and feel within ourselves, a “yet” grounded in the Person of the Holy and Mighty God in whom we dare hope and to whom we belong, even in our hurt: a God “who works for those who wait for God”.

In the Epistle passage (1 Corinthians 1:3-9) St. Paul addresses such a community of hope in Corinth. Generally, the Corinthians weren’t any greater on waiting than we are. Corinth, like ours, was a self-indulgent society. They had the idea that all that was to be given had already been delivered...to them! They were self-sufficient, rugged individuals. That mentality, understandably, spilled over into the life of the Christian community at Corinth. So much so, that Paul later takes to task this church which had been blessed, as he puts it, “in every way...in speech and knowledge of every kind...in every spiritual gift…”

Paul addresses himself to people who have a different set of expectations, people aware of their hurt and weakness, people who wait in hope for Jesus to reveal himself in all his fullness. In our day, “end time” talk can be somewhat embarrassing, if not outright off-putting. Advent deals with the reality of the eschaton = the end time: the end of creation as we know it; the end of a world of abandonment, sorrow, alienation, and injustice.

Mark’s Gospel narrative (13:24-37) affirms this. Often called a “little Apocalypse”, i.e., a miniature revelation, it speaks of waiting for a decisively disruptive coming. Mark uses extravagant end-time images: a darkened sun/moon; falling stars; the assembling of the chosen from everywhere. If we can get beyond this tumultuous and somewhat overpowering imagery, we can recognize that, in themselves, these verses are simple, sober and disciplined. They convey a transparent message: the advent, the coming, of Jesus the Chosen One, in whose coming the world as we know it, “heaven and earth”, will be transformed. The crucial point which Mark stresses is to “beware, keep alert”

This common thread runs through all of today’s readings: the end of what we know as “the world” will be brought about by God alone and in God’s time alone. Our task is to wait, watch and be alert for the coming reign of God. Advent isn’t a business-as-usual festival of things which we now know and possess, or perhaps seek to possess under the Christmas tree! Jesus the Chosen One for whom we wait isn’t just a gentle baby who comes to fit into our preconceived world, but rather the mighty Son of Man who breaks into our hurting and hopeful humanity. Advent reminds us that his in-breaking is a two-edged sword. On the one hand, there’s a shattering of our this-worldly settledness and our comfortable assumptions that we can buy our way to whatever we want. But there’s also a liberation, a setting-free, by shattering the narrowness that restricts us, the selfishness that binds us and others, and the paralysis and apathy which shuts us down.

These may be hard words for us who claim to rely on God, but whose actions so often imply that we’re really in charge. The temptation for all of us is to think of God as a “Sugar Daddy” who presides over a predictable world in order to keep it user-friendly and benign for us. We’d really like to believe that if we only work at it in clever ways, perhaps we can have the world, and our family, and our job, and our Church on our terms. “Well,” writes theologian Walter Bruggemann, “that is conventional. But it is not biblical, not Christian, not news.”

Ironically, the greatest barriers between us and God may oftentimes not be our sins and guilt, but our gifts and talents. God asks us to repent not only of our sins, but of our reliance on our own resources, virtues and power. To live as though my priorities could ever supercede God’s is full-blown spiritual pride. To live as though I have God’s own private cell phone number is to live an arrogant pretension which separates me from others and from God. To allow myself to feel religiously superior because of my real or supposed religious “experiences” or insights is to substitute those things for God, and that is idolatry. The clay, in its self-importance, tries to tell the Potter how and when and whom to mold!

Advent is meant to shatter our fantasy worlds, and to teach us to accept and to speak about our pain and the world’s; to look in hope, not to ourselves, but to Jesus. Advent asks if you and I are open enough for a newness to be given, if we’re trusting enough of the faithful God to let go of this world. Advent should lead us to reflect on Jesus‘ observation (Mark 13:2) that “Not one stone will be left here upon another…”

Larry Parton, in a now-defunct little magazine called alive now!, wrote: “The one we wait for is the one who will get in our way. He is the one who will disturb us and our peace. He is the one who will stop cooing and begin to talk about things that will trouble us.” Realizing that, do we, as 1st century Christians did, still dare to pray without ceasing throughout our Advent wait: “Maranatha -- Come, Lord Jesus”?